Nobody Sees
by comicbooklovergreen
Summary: AU,sequel to 'Picking Up the Pieces.' Back in the present, John struggles with knowledge of a bleak future.While he tries to reconcile the memory of Allison with the reality of Cameron, Sarah and Charley face their own issues. Meanwhile, the shadows of Weaver and Judgment Day hang over everyone. Not a Jameron fic. Don't like, don't read.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** So, I was totally going to wait on posting this, until I had the storyline more planned out. Then Wheresmyluce overloaded me with Charley/Sarah goodness, using her kickass video skills to showcase my fic. That, plus I realized that for me, planning equals procrastinating. I work better with the promise of reviews and the specter of an incomplete fic hanging over my head.

Before anyone asks, no, this will not be Jameron. I like John, I like Cameron, and I don't totally despise the pairing. However, I can't write it. Yeah, it's against canon. So is Charley being alive. So, to avoid what happened last time, please refrain from criticizing lack of Jameron in a non-Jameron fic. John will be here, Cameron will be here, Jameron will not. If you can't stomach that, I won't be offended if you exit stage right before the show starts.

Summary sucks, I know that. At some point, I'll make it slightly less sucky. If you've read the first one (and you sort of need to, to get this), then you know what to expect. Character stuff with occasional sprinkles of plot, and my usual combo of angst mixed with everything else. The last one was floating around in my head for the better part of a year before I finally wrote it, hence the quick updates. This, as I said, not so planned out. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, and I hope you guys enjoy the ride. Remember, feedback makes the line for the ride go faster, so drop some on your way out.

**Disclaimer: **Really? Do I really need to point out that they aren't mine?

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><p><em>Who's gonna pick you up?<br>Who's gonna bend your rules?  
>Who's gonna be your prop?<br>Who's gonna play your fool?_

_Nobody know just how it feels today_  
><em>Nobody sees how our hearts break<em>

_Who's gonna watch your back?_  
><em>Who's gonna reel you in?<em>  
><em>Who'll make surprise attacks?<em>  
><em>Who's gonna be there at the end?<em>

_Nobody knows just how it feels today_  
><em>Nobody sees how our hearts break<em>

_Who's gonna bring you round?_  
><em>Who's gonna let you sleep?<em>  
><em>Who's gonna break your frown?<em>  
><em>Who's gonna fall down at your feet?<em>

_Nobody know just how it feels today  
>Nobody sees how our hearts break<em>

**-Powderfinger, Nobody Sees**

* * *

><p>They met in an abandoned warehouse, halfway between the city, and the desert that'd been home for the last three months. Savannah had wanted to accompany them, but that hadn't happened. She stayed with Ellison at the house, while Sarah went to get her son. There'd been no question that Charley would go too. He wasn't John's father, but he was close enough for that fact not to matter very much.<p>

The first thing Sarah's eyes truly focused on was Cameron. Last time she saw that face, it'd been damaged down to the endoskeleton, melting in a bath of thermite. And then John stepped out from behind a row of metal shelves, and Sarah forgot to care about the cyborg. She left Charley behind, moved past Cameron as if she wasn't there, and threw her arms around her son.

"Mom," he said, voice muffled against her jacket. The leather was a familiar scent. Since childhood, John associated it with his mother, with some approximation of safety. Breathing deeply to keep himself from crying all over her favorite coat, John clutched at her with a desperation he couldn't control. He couldn't remember the last time he'd needed to hold her this badly. After he and the other machine broke her out of Pescadero? After the man who wasn't Sarkissian held a gun to his head? After Riley died and he fell asleep in his mother's lap? John didn't know. All he knew was that her arms were around him now, and he needed them to stay that way.

Sarah cried noiselessly, wetting her son's neck with a few tears that wouldn't follow her directions and go away. She hadn't seen her boy in six months, had resigned herself to the fact that she'd never see him again. He was here now, shaking in her arms. Shaking, but not crying, not that she could tell. Sarah crushed him against her, running her fingers through his hair. It was short, like when he left, but it was also greasy under her fingers. Sarah didn't care. Swallowing a sob, she kissed his cheek, and didn't care about the layer of grime she found there.

After long moments of being a five-year-old boy again, wanting nothing more than his mother's touch, John began to regain some form of control. He smelled like tunnel filth and he was infecting her with it. He thought he smelled like blood too, but since she hadn't commented, John assumed that that part was in his head. He always smelled blood now, whether it was old or new.

"It's okay, Mom," he said, making a go at reassurance. He should let go of her, but he didn't want to. He didn't think she'd let him.

John, comforting her. That wasn't usually how the game worked. He sounded the same, but not completely. He sounded like he may've gotten used to offering comfort, since she'd seen him last. With a long, fortifying breath, Sarah pulled back from the embrace, irritated by the need to blink back more tears and wipe away the ones that had escaped. Eyes clear, she studied him hard, taking in every detail. John looked the same, but different. Reaching up, Sarah mapped a series of small scars on his face, little imperfections that, probably, no one else would notice. Except for Cameron, with her databases and her perfect recall. And Charley. Charley would probably notice.

Knowing that mother and son needed their time, Charley had hung back when Sarah broke away from him. Cameron had done the same. And now Cameron was regarding him with a kind of curious detachment that made Charley even more eager to join the other two.

"Charley Dixon."

"Scary cyborg." It was almost a question. He'd helped Sarah burn this thing, shortly after John left. He'd gotten used to his lover polishing shotguns at the breakfast table. He'd gotten used to the fact that eight years for him hadn't been eight years for her. Firearms and time travel, he was pretty okay with. The machines, _this _machine, looking pretty as a picture after they'd melted her to slag, Charley was still working on that.

Cameron tilted her head minutely. _"_Very scary cyborg."

So much for any doubts that it was her. Still, Charley fought the image of the machine's flesh melting off while Sarah watched dispassionately. "We…we burned you."

Cameron seemed to consider that for a moment. "Thank you."

"Uh-huh," Charley replied, nodding slowly.

"You called me a cyborg."

"Uh-huh," Charley repeated, fighting off a familiar unease that'd only gotten worse since the last time he saw this machine functioning. That'd been right after she crossed a wire somewhere and nearly killed John and Sarah. Shortly after that, one of her cyborg pals had kidnapped his wife. "You prefer robot now?"

"No. Cyborg is the correct term. Thank you for using it."

"No problem."

Meanwhile, Sarah had finally let her son go, but she couldn't fight the compulsion to touch him. Hair, face, arms, her hands moved of their own volition. John didn't squirm. In fact, he leaned into whatever contact she gave, sucking it in. Sarah couldn't remember the last time he'd done that.

"You're too thin." Her first words to her son in half a year, not counting the phone call from earlier. Not exactly what she'd meant to say, but there they were.

John chuckled, smiling fully for the first time in…he didn't know how long. Mom in full-out 'mom' mode. It used to irritate him, it used to amuse him. Jesus he'd missed it. "Not really. Cameron, the people we stole clothes from…" John shrugged.

He _did _look ridiculous. The jeans were huge on him, and the shirt… The shirt hung like one of Charley's shirts, when Sarah decided to skip laundry and steal herself a sleep garment. Still, even accounting for the oversized clothing…

"Mom, I'm okay." It wasn't a lie, not exactly. Ignoring any worries about his physical state right now, John pulled her into another hug. "I love you."

She was not going to cry again. She was _not_. "How long?"

The response was slow in coming, and John's voice was different when he gave it. "Too long." Swallowing hard, John pulled back from the hug to study his mother. "The date. Is it really…?" He knew already, but couldn't quite accept it.

"Six months. For me, it was six months."

Closing his eyes tight, John embraced her again. "I'm sorry. I tried…I tried to set it so we'd be back right away."

"John-"

"I'm sorry."

Was he apologizing for coming back when he did? For leaving? For things that happened before he left? Sarah had no idea.

"You look better. Then when I left," John said this after breaking the second embrace. Off his mother's raised eyebrow, he quickly added to the statement. "Healthy, Mom. You look…" He might be too thin now, but his mother had been skin and bones when he left. John hated himself for not noticing. For being so preoccupied with his own issues that it took Cameron for him to realize that his mom was wasting away. A sudden wave of nausea and panic had his eyes widening. "You are…you're not-"

"I'm okay. I'm good." She couldn't ask if she'd been that way where he'd come back from. John's face told her that maybe she _shouldn't _ask. But there were other things, other questions. "John-"

"Mom," he interrupted, knowing from her tone that they were heading for rough territory. "I can't yet. Please."

God he sounded young. Not in the angry, petulant way that she'd gotten used to though. "We'll have to talk, John." They hadn't before, not nearly enough. Much as she hated to admit it, Sherman the shrink had been right.

"Mom…it's gone."

"What is?"

"The timeline, the…where I was…everything that happened there, it won't…it's gone."

Time travel gave her a headache. The multiple timeline business made her want to put a gun to her head. Still, Sarah thought she knew what he was saying. "We still need to talk," she said gently.

"I know," John replied, making sure she'd understand that he meant it. "Just…not yet. Please not yet."

"All right," Sarah said, partly to reassure him, partly because she was still battling an urge to simply hold him and keep holding him until she convinced herself he was there. _She _couldn't handle the talk yet either. "You're home," she assured him, echoing his words on the phone. "You're home now. There's time."

Shoulders sagging in relief, John tried for an easy smile. "You think we can make time for your pancakes? I've been craving those for a long time."

Despite her hesitance to tackle the big stuff now, Sarah fought her desire to press for details on what 'a long time' meant. Aside from a few scars and the weight loss, he looked almost the same. But there were changes in his eyes, the set of his jaw, things that weren't quite physical. Sarah wondered how different she looked, after the terminator showed up, but before she started training, before she started showing.

"I think pancakes are doable," she said, smiling as Charley came up next to her. She directed her next comment at him rather than her son. "You mind putting off your bowling thing until tomorrow?"

"Bowling?" John asked. He tried keeping his tone light, fighting the fresh wave of emotion that came with Charley's approach.

"Bouillabaisse," Charley explained.

"That's what I said," Sarah told him. John was smiling, even if it was strained, so she smiled too. It was easier to do that when Charley brushed his fingers against hers.

"No," he said, briefly squeezing her hand before pulling away. "That's not what you said."

"How about explaining to me what _you _said."

"It's French. Fish soup. If you want pancakes-"

"No. I do, but…" He was starving, despite what he'd told his mother. He wanted pancakes and cheeseburgers and pizza…even this fish soup was sounding good.

Charley hadn't seen John in a long time, much longer than Sarah. And still, he could read the boy's thoughts with a great deal of accuracy. "We'll make the pancakes an appetizer for the soup."

"You don't need to do that."

Charley shrugged. Up close, he saw what Sarah had, how much weight the boy had lost. "Doing it anyway. Pancakes and seafood."

John's smile became a grin. "Two great tastes that taste great together?"

"Guess we'll find out, won't we?"

Nodding, John felt his control slipping. "Charley," he said, a lump in his throat.

John took half a step forward, then stopped. Without thought, Charley pulled the boy into a one-armed hug that quickly became a full-on embrace. He hadn't been exaggerating when he told Ellison that John was like a son. It was a long moment before he could muster the control needed to speak. "Hey Johnny. Welcome back."

He was trying to be strong, but that almost broke him. Choking back a noise he didn't want them to hear, John clung to Charley in much the same way he had with his mother. His shoulders started to shake again.

"You're home," Charley murmured, because he didn't know what else to say. He didn't know what else to do either, except hold John more tightly. "You're home."

John nodded against Charley's shoulder. He wasn't crying, but he couldn't stop the shaking. And, even though he wanted to, he couldn't stop himself from talking either. "I know," he replied, voice raw with emotion. "You said…you promised…"

John trailed off and Charley didn't push. For now, it was enough to just _be _here.. The rest, the rest could wait.

She was not going to cry again. She. Was not. Going to cry again. Using her sleeve as a tissue, Sarah got rid of a few more renegade tears before turning away. She'd had her moment with John, Charley deserved his. And she was not, _was not_, going to cry in front of him and John. There'd been enough crying in the last six months.

Cameron stood where she'd been standing since they came in. Sarah approached cautiously. Six months ago, she'd been ready to burn the cyborg, even before Zeira Corp. She'd been ready to leave her in the dust, along with Derek. The only thing that stopped her was the lead on Savannah, the need for backup. When she finally _had _burned the metal, there'd been no regrets. Aside from the fact that destroying Cameron meant accepting that John wouldn't be coming back, there'd been no regrets. Now though…now she'd gone half a year without a terminator at her back. Beyond the obvious benefits of having a machine on their side…Sarah had missed her. Not terribly, not all the time, but Cameron _had _been a part of the dysfunctional family Sarah had tried to maintain. With John and the machine gone, Sarah had constructed a new, dysfunctional family, but occasionally, when Savannah would ask question after question during her schooling, or during their training sessions, Sarah would be reminded of Cameron. Of the quirks, of the endless questions about what humans did or didn't do. And, in those moments, with time and loneliness obscuring some of the anger, Sarah _had _missed her. Desperate times, desperate measures.

"Sarah," Cameron greeted.

"Robo-Barbie."

"Cybor-"

"I know."

"We're back."

"I noticed," Sarah replied. Chip was obviously the same, but was it still damaged, or had John managed to do something about that?

"You and Charley Dixon destroyed my original endoskeleton."

Sarah nodded, a memory popping into her head. Cameron, after she went bad, telling Sarah what to do if it ever happened again. "Turned you to vapor."

Cameron tilted her head a little. "Thank you."

"Anytime. So, you want to explain this to me?" she asked, gesturing towards Cameron's undamaged body.

"Future-John programmed me to be unique. However, Skynet created me, my model."

"And Skynet makes good use of Henry Ford's business model," Sarah finished, confirming what she'd already guessed. She'd even said it to Charley, before they burned the endo. Always another body. Always more of them. "It's…I'm glad you're back, both of you."

She was losing her mind. She was on an emotional high from John's return, and it was causing her mind to malfunction. Sarah was still pissed at the machine for leaving in the first place, for causing John to leave. But time scars all wounds, and at this precise moment, that particular wound didn't ache as much as it should. It would, later, once Sarah's brain came back to full power.

"Does that mean you're glad to see me?"

Sarah shrugged as she tried not to gag. "It means something."

"Ditto," Cameron replied, after a moment's consideration.

"What?"

"Your behavior implies that you are glad to see me. Ditto."

"Ditto?" Sarah repeated, a bemused smile curving her lips.

"Ditto. It means-"

"I know what it means."

"Oh. Burning the body was a tactically sound decision."

"I do my best."

Cameron's eyes roamed, moving away from Sarah's face. "Charley Dixon is not wearing his wedding ring."

Glancing over her shoulder, Sarah watched John and Charley engage in muffled conversation. When she turned back to the machine, her eyes were narrowed. "No, he's not."

"He answered your cell phone."

"Yeah, he did."

"He's been residing with you."

The anger was back, building. Sarah saw the way the machine observed Charley, heard something in a voice that should've been monotonous. "We got reacquainted after you and my son took off."

"I took off. John was not supposed to follow."

"He did," Sarah retorted. A different anger was building now, the anger of knowing that John had chosen a machine over his future, his destiny. Over her.

"You let him. You shouldn't have done that."

So much for missing the metal. "Won't happen again. I learn from my mistakes."

"Do you? Your relationship with Charley Dixon brought danger into his life."

"I know," Sarah said, speaking through gritted teeth.

Cameron tilted her head, processing the response. "That's what John said, about his relationship with Riley. Riley's dead now."

"I know that, too."

"Michelle Dixon is also dead. Your attempt to save her was-"

"Was what, a tactical error? I got that already. And I get that you would've left her to die out there."

"She did die out there. She's dead now, and your behavior indicates that you've resumed your relationship with Charley Dixon."

"Charley's not your concern. We've been over this."

"He's your concern though. You've made questionable decisions, because of your concern for him. John will be concerned as well."

"John loves Charley."

"Yes. Your behavior indicates that you do as well. John's love for Charley could be dangerous. So could yours."

"Why don't you let me worry about that." Sarah's voice was low, and her hand was close to her waist. Her gun.

"Charley Dixon is not an asset to the mission, he's not a soldier."

"Neither was I. Once."

"He's a liability. You bring danger into his life, and your concern for him could endanger yours. And John's."

Sarah closed her eyes for half a second, fighting the machine's words. When she opened them again, they were as cold as her voice. "Charley's off limits. Get that through your metal skull, your processors, whatever. My relationship with him is none of your _fucking _business. You told me you'd leave him alone."

"I did."

"And you've also lied. About a lot of things."

"Yes. I've also left Charley Dixon alone."

"Good. Keep it that way. I burned you once, I have no problem doing it again. Understood?"

"Understood."

Sarah turned on her heel just as John and Charley were moving towards them. Slightly ahead, John reached her first, frowning at the look on his mother's face. "Mom?"

"I'm fine. Let's get out of here."

John looked between Cameron and his mother, eyes narrowing as they reached the machine. "What did you say to her?"

"John."

"Nothing," Cameron replied. "Just making conversation."

"Mom-"

"John. We're going." Sarah took a breath, struggling to soften her tone. "Let's get you home."

She forced John and Cameron to walk ahead, ignoring the looks from her son. Charley's worried expression was harder to shrug off.

"Hey," he said, pushing a stray lock of hair from her eyes. "You okay?"

Cameron glanced back at her. Sarah met the cyborg's gaze for half a second before slipping her hand into Charley's, making sure that Cameron would see. "I'm good," she replied, pulling until he walked with her and tightening her grip on his hand. "John's here, you're here, I'm good."

It was bullshit and Charley knew it, and Sarah _knew _that he knew it. He always knew when she was lying, even when he chose not to call her on it. For now, he chose not to do that, and Sarah loved him for it.

* * *

><p>Savannah and Ellison were in the living room when they got home. Savannah stared at Cameron with wide eyes, while Sarah glared a warning at the machine.<p>

"You…you were in the garage." Savannah remembered quite vividly. Aunt Sarah had told her more about the machines, and she'd used Cameron's body to show her about them. "You were at my house, then you got hurt. Then you were in the garage."

"Yes. I'm not in the garage anymore."

"Why don't you do a perimeter check?" John suggested, weary of the tension that'd been there since they left the warehouse, that'd continued when they made a quick stop for clothes. "You've never been here before, might as well get used to the place."

"I will establish a patrol pattern."

"Great," Charley replied, in a voice that didn't match his words. The machine made him incredibly uneasy, and that was before Sarah started lying to him about what it had done or said.

Once Cameron was gone, John turned his attention to Savannah, dropping to one knee and offering a strained smile. "Hi. You uh-"

Savannah guessed what he would say; they'd had this conversation before. "You're John. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Charley missed you a lot."

John swallowed hard, looking at the people in question as he spoke. "I missed them a lot too." Returning his eyes to Savannah, "You…you look different than the last time I saw you."

Savannah frowned, unsure what to make of the words, or the look on John's face. "My hair's a little longer. I wanted to get a mohawk, but Aunt Sarah won't let me."

John laughed in a way he didn't think himself capable of. Sometimes it felt like he'd forgotten how laughter worked. "Yeah, she can be tough. I think I had that same argument with her once."

"Aren't you the comedian," Sarah commented. Her voice was dry, but she smiled as she watched her children interact. Then she replayed that thought, and the smile disappeared. When had Savannah become hers? Sarah didn't know. It wasn't a conscious thing; she had no recollection of thinking that way before, of making that choice. She'd made mistakes with John. She'd tried, but she'd made mistakes. And what right did she have to think as she did? She was _Aunt _Sarah, Savannah wasn't-

"You need a bath," the redhead declared. She'd held off as long as she could, but the dirt…and the _smell_.

"Savannah," Charley began, but John cut him off, still smiling.

"You going to call her a liar?" he asked. To Savannah, "I _do _need a shower. Or two. Or twenty."

"Don't use all the hot water," Savannah advised earnestly. "Aunt Sarah got really mad last time Uncle James did that."

"Savannah has a way of understating things," said James, rising from the couch and gesturing for Savannah to follow him. "How about we help get dinner started?"

"Pancakes!" Savannah exclaimed, eyes lighting up. The breakfast-for-dinner thing still excited her, and she eagerly followed Uncle James.

"Pancakes and Bouillabaisse," Charley pointed out.

Savannah made a face. "You're still making the bowling stuff?"

Sarah and John snorted back laughs, which Charley determinedly ignored. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, kid."

As Savannah and James bustled around in the kitchen, Sarah watched her son, watched the look on his face while he watched Savannah. "You knew her," Sarah said, voice barely audible. "Didn't you?"

John shut his eyes again. He was off the floor, facing Charley and his mother. "I knew her."

Sarah released a harsh breath, feeling Charley's hand on her back. "She survives then."

John met his mother's gaze, even though it was difficult. "She survives."

The way he said it had Sarah on edge, her need to know overriding her decision to wait John out. "John? What happened…happens?" Fucking time travel was going to be the death of her.

"It's gone, Mom. I told you. What happened there…it won't happen anymore."

"Johnny-"

He couldn't take this. Not yet. "Where I was, she survived the bombs. She…she asked me to say hi to her parents."

"Her parents. The father's dead and Weaver-"

John pressed a kiss to his mother's forehead, smiling at how the simple things could be so complicated for her. "She wasn't talking about Weaver. Or her father." John waited just long enough to see the looks on Charley and his mom's faces, then he headed off in search of a bathroom.

* * *

><p>John took a shower. A long one. Eventually, Charley wound up knocking on the bathroom door.<p>

"Yeah?"

John's voice came muffled through the wood. "Dinner's ready, Johnny."

"Thanks. Out in a minute."

The tone of his voice was also muffled, but Charley was an expert at knowing when a Connor was hiding things from him. "You okay in there?"

"Fine."

"John."

"What?"

"It's _me_."

There was a pause. "Door's not locked."

Charley entered the bathroom to find John wearing jeans and nothing else. His skin was red, but that wasn't what Charley focused on. He was looking at the scars, all over John's torso. They ranged in size, and the full collection didn't seem as large as Sarah's, but still. Back, shoulders. John was by the sink, standing in front of the mirror, and Charley could see that his chest was marred in a similar fashion.

"I can't get clean," John said. He'd practically scalded himself, and all the gunk had gone down the drain, but he didn't feel cleansed.

"Oh John…" Charley shut the door behind him before crossing to the boy. He _was _thin. There was muscle there, but John was way too thin. Like Sarah, for those first three months after he left.

"I can't. I tried."

"John," Charley repeated, touching the boy's shoulder.

"I tried to set it so I'd be back right away. So Mom wouldn't…"

"It's okay, Johnny."

John gripped the sink with white knuckles, head down. "Derek was there. So was my dad."

Charley took his hand away when John shrugged it off. There was a new shirt sitting on the toilet lid, and John slipped into it before turning to Charley again. "Don't tell Mom," he said, gesturing vaguely at his upper body.

"You honestly think those would matter to her?"

"No. They matter to me though."

"Your mom doesn't do well with secrets, Johnny."

"That's not what I'm asking. I'll tell her. Just…"

"Not now."

"Not now."

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Sarah didn't wait for an invitation, reminding Charley of all the times she showed up unannounced back at the lighthouse. "Dinner's getting cold," she said, voice gentle as she looked at her son.

John didn't speak immediately. He'd stopped clenching the sink, but everything about him was tense, and his eyes were panicked as he met those of his mother. "I tried."

"You tried what?" Sarah asked, stepping past Charley to get to John.

"To fix it. To save them."

"Who?"

"Everyone. Derek. Dad."

Sarah felt like she'd taken a sledgehammer to the gut. "Kyle was there?"

"Kyle…was everything you ever told me. And he was a hero. Like always. And he died for me. Like always. Like everybody always does."

The tears came, hard and fast. Sarah pulled John against her, and he didn't fight it, as she'd expected him to. The crying was almost silent, but it was still happening. "Shhh, John. It's not your fault. Whatever happened there, it's not your fault."

"You're wrong. You don't know."

"So tell me then."

"Nothing much to tell. They died. Like always. Kyle died. Like always."

John was thin, but he was also leaning almost all his weight on her. Sarah backed up and his hold tightened convulsively. "Hey. I'm here. You're home. I've got you, John."

Except she didn't. He was shaking uncontrollably and she couldn't get her balance, not with how he was leaning on her. And then Charley was there, and he guided both of them and said comforting things to John, and then Sarah was on the floor, back against the tub, John in her arms.

Charley stayed a few minutes, crouched down in front of them. But John wasn't hearing him. Just like Sarah hadn't heard him when she cried in his arms after they burned the machine.

* * *

><p>Charley kept Savannah occupied while Sarah offered a comfort he'd never be able to give. He came back every so often, having a quick and silent conversation with his ex-fiancé before shutting the door again. John didn't seem aware of these interruptions.<p>

The fourth time he came in, John was asleep, and Sarah was essentially trapped. Ignoring her warning looks, Charley crouched down again and woke John as gently as possible. The boy muttered a drowsy protest as Charley helped him to his feet.

"You're not sleeping in here. Savannah's usually half-asleep when she comes in to brush her teeth. She'll use you as a rug."

They got John set up in Ellison's room. The other man had readily agreed to a temporary return to his old sleeping arrangements. John crashed again as soon as he hit the bed, still wearing his day clothes. It wasn't that late, but John was out like a light. He didn't seem to notice when Sarah hung back to do the creepy, staring-while-he-slept thing.

After she'd done that for awhile, assuring herself that John wouldn't disappear again, Sarah left his room, just as Cameron walked past. She'd heard the machine's treads a few minutes ago, but had chosen to ignore them.

"John is distressed."

"John's sleeping."

"He's also distressed."

"Give the girl a prize. Start checking out real estate prices, this place is too small for all of us." If she was going to live with Cameron again, Sarah at least wanted a modicum of breathing room.

"It is a buyer's market," Cameron observed. "Purchasing a house at this time is a good strategy."

"And now I can sleep tonight, knowing you approve."

Cameron was blocking the way to Sarah's bedroom. After a long glare, the machine moved aside, and Sarah went past her, resisting the urge to slam the door only because of John sleeping in one room, Savannah in the other. She'd thought of pressing the machine for details. About Weaver, John Henry, whatever the fuck had been going on. Her need to get away from Cameron outweighed her need to know, and Sarah wasn't sure she trusted any answers the metal might give.

Weary beyond description, Sarah sat down at the edge of the bed, closing her eyes. So much for happy homecomings. Charley came in a few minutes later, bearing the leftovers of a dinner that neither Connor had taken part in.

"Bowling thing, a' la Dixon," he proclaimed, setting a bowl of soup on the dresser, next to one of Sarah's spare pistols.

"Thanks, not hungry."

"You're shattering my feelings, you know that, right?"

With the barest hint of a smile, Sarah walked over to him, an expectant look on her face as she studied the soup.

"Forget how to use a spoon?" he asked, his own lips curved.

"You have no idea how tired I am right now."

"I've got some idea." Spoon in hand, Charley blew on it lightly before bringing it to her mouth. Sarah did the thing she sometimes did with her tongue and her lips, and despite his own exhaustion, something in the caveman part of Charley's brain lit up. She did it to torture him, that was the only explanation.

"It's good,' Sarah pronounced. "John would've liked it."

"He'll eat tomorrow," Charley said, raising the spoon again. "Don't ever say my restaurant isn't full service."

"You start servicing someone else like this, the three of us will need to have a conversation," Sarah replied, casually running her hand over the pistol next to her dinner.

"Is that your version of subtle hinting?"

Sarah didn't reply. Cameron's steps were outside again, as she resumed the old routine of pacing the house, searching for threats. Sarah tried and failed at keeping Cameron's words out of her head.

"You going to tell me the truth yet?"

"About what?"

"About how you're doing."

"Told you, I'm tired."

"Besides that."

Charley was pleasantly surprised when Sarah slipped her arms around his neck, pressing their lips together. The kiss was slow, deep, and then it was multiple kisses. Sarah broke off just long enough to keep him from asphyxiating, then she came back. This became a pattern, until finally Charley broke away, putting his fingers against her lips.

"You're trying to distract me," he stated. It was working. When she wanted to, when she kissed him like that, Sarah had the ability to short-circuit his entire brain.

"I'm trying to distract _myself_," she corrected, darting her tongue against his fingers and smirking at the reaction she got. "You just happen to be here."

"Your distractions are going to kill me one day," he muttered, kissing her quickly and resting his forehead against hers.

That was too accurate. _Cameron _was too accurate. John had muttered something into Charley's shoulder at the warehouse, but Sarah hadn't heard it clearly. Derek, Kyle, Savannah. She knew John hadn't really told her anything yet, but he also hadn't mentioned Charley being there.

"Hey."

"Hmmm?"

"Love you."

Charley frowned, pulling back to see her face. "Feeling's mutual. You're worrying me."

"Is that a new experience for you?"

"More than usual."

Sarah hugged him to get out of looking at him. "Tell me this is going to get better."

"It will. _He _will."

"You mean that, or are you saying it because I asked you to?'

"Does it have to be one or the other? He's home, he's with us now. We'll…we'll make him okay."

Sarah dropped a kiss to the side of his neck. "You said he was coming back." He'd told her that, in the garage, after they burned Cameron. He'd believed it, when she hadn't.

"I didn't think you heard me," he said, stroking through dark hair. She'd been so far-gone, the closest he'd ever seen to total breakdown.

"I always hear you," Sarah replied, lips close to his ear. "Don't always listen, but I always hear you."

When she wasn't threatening to shoot him or tear his arm out, Sarah had a real knack for words. "It's going to be okay," he told her, pulling back enough to kiss her again.

"Hope so."

"It will. I was right about John, wasn't I?"

Sarah smiled, lips grazing across his chin. "You were right about John."

"There you go. I never lie to you."

He never lied. Reese said that once, in her head. Reese had died, and, according to John, he'd died again. Like always. Like everyone. "Charley…"

Sarah didn't know what she would've said if Savannah hadn't screamed. It wasn't playful, like when Charley chased or tickled her. It was loud and terrified and blood-curdling, and Sarah was pushing away from Charley and snatching her gun before her brain fully registered the sound.

She met John in the hallway, shoving him aside. Partly to keep him out of potential danger, mostly because she couldn't reach Savannah's room fast enough. John fell into Charley, and the hand that wasn't holding his own gun reached out to steady the boy. Sarah could feel Ellison and Cameron crowding into the hallway. Fucking house was too small. And too big. Sarah couldn't get to the kid fast enough.

She threw open Savannah's door and turned the light on in one motion. The girl was sitting up in bed, shaking. Not the nightmare shakes, the ones that occasionally still plagued her. This wasn't nightmares. There was no color in Savannah's face. Sarah thought of how scared the kid was after Kaliba showed up at the lighthouse. This was worse. Much, much worse.

"Don't. Don't let her…" Savannah's voice, barely there to begin with, trailed off to nothing.

Sarah checked the room, as she had already, as she knew the others must be doing. Empty, no sign of threats. Someone knocked into someone else, and Sarah got an elbow in the back. She crossed into the room and got halfway between doorway and bed before something flickered in her vision. And then the floor was shifting, and suddenly Catherine Weaver was there, standing close to Savannah, stroking up and down the child's arm. Savannah's whole body spasmed at the contact.

"Hello all. Good to see you again." To Savannah,"Hello, darling. I've missed you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **First off, let me apologize to the people this doesn't pertain to. I'm going to play the broken record game one more time, then we'll be done. No, I'm not pretending the Jameron stuff never happened, as you'll see in the chapter. I _do_ think that people and relationships change, especially after traumatic events. John jumping to a post-apocalyptic future and enduring we-don't-know-what while he was there? I'm thinking that may've had an impact. Yeah, he did a huge thing for Cameron, and now he seems to be regressing in his treatment of her. Is that explained right off? No. Look at 'Samson and Delilah,' and the eps that followed. Not everything regarding the Sarkissian death was explained immediately, and John was a pretty big mess for a long time afterward. We're talking about a teenage boy who was already battling PTSD, prior to jumping into a war zone.

To those of you who only read the first fic because of the promise of Jameron…I don't even know what to say at this point. Read the AN from chapter two. Read my profile. I apologize if you wasted time, but when there are literally hundreds of Jameron fics here, I'm not sure why you'd wade through a Sarah/Charley fic when there are _so _many stories that are more to your taste. I like Sarah. If I see a fic that's clearly billed as taking place after her death or without her around, I usually don't read it, simple as that. When I've stated time and again that I have no interest in writing Jameron, all I can tell you is buyer beware. If something's not to your taste, why bother complaining when you _know _it won't be focused on the characters you like? It's like going to a comedy movie and saying that there aren't enough horror scenes.

Yes, I know Josh Friedman's position on Jameron. I'm not him, I'm not trying to be him, and I don't think that his word is law when it comes to fanfic. As to accusations that I'm anti-Jameron, first off, it doesn't matter. People are allowed to like or dislike whatever characters/pairings they want, regardless of what the show writers think. But, just to be clear, I've read Uncommoner's fics. I've read ElusiveSanity's fics. I've read KingSteve, I've read the 'Secret Diary' fic. Orsino's work is fabulous, in my opinion. What do all these fics have in common? If I hate a pairing, I'll go on record and say I hate a pairing. John/Riley, Derek/Cameron. There. Jameron has been done well at times. In the fanfic world. In the show, I simply wasn't convinced. There are lots of reasons for this, some of which will be outlined below. If you need Jameron to like a story, fine. I just remain unclear as to why you'd read something that has never, _ever_ claimed to be a Jameron fic, only to criticize it for not being geared towards you.

Again, I apologize for the rambling. My intention is to clear the air once and for all, then let the issue stay buried. I feel like this defending myself thing was rather needless, since I've made no secret of where my interests lie, but there you go. Rather than complain about my supposed anti-Jameron tendencies, I'd ask that you just exit stage right if you can't comment on any other aspect of the story. Honestly, don't even waste the time typing a review, just move on to the dozens upon dozens of Jameron fics. If that means I'm left with just a few followers, that's fine. Relatively speaking, TSCC didn't have mass appeal either.

* * *

><p>She'd dreamed about this night. For six months, Sarah had dreamed of having John n her arms again. She'd also had a lot of nightmares during that time, so the image of a terminator standing over Savannah, able to hurt or kill her at any moment, the scenario wasn't exactly new.<p>

"Get away from her," Sarah ordered, voice close to a growl as she leveled her gun in empty threat. She couldn't shoot with Savannah right there, and the bullet would do nothing, even if her aim was good.

"Sarah."

Cameron, somewhere behind her. "Quiet." She'd seen Weaver in action, if only briefly. She'd also seen the other one like her, the one from years ago. If Weaver chose to do something to Savannah, Cameron wouldn't be fast enough to stop it._ Sarah _wouldn't be fast enough to stop it.

"Mom-"

John didn't finish the sentence. Ellison had drawn his gun, slower than Sarah. Weaver's arm, the one that wasn't touching Savannah, stretched across the room, forming into a spear. In the blink of an eye, Ellison's pistol was on the floor, and Catherine's weaponized arm was millimeters away from his throat.

"Point a gun at someone, you'd best be prepared to use it. I'm sure they taught you that at Quantico. Long time no see, Mr. Ellison. I hope you're having a pleasant evening."

"I was," Ellison replied, sweat visible on his dark skin. "Amazing how quickly things can change."

Weaver shook her head minutely, the smallest of frowns on her lips. "When last we spoke, you were much more the gentleman, James."

"Again, things have a way of changing," Ellison retorted, fighting to keep the fear out of his voice.

"Yes, I suppose they do." Still with a hand on Savannah's arm, and a sphere over Ellison's windpipe, Weaver swept her eyes over the rest of the group. "Would you mind lowering your weapons? You're frightening Savannah."

"I don't think that's us," Sarah refuted. Still, she gestured at the others, felt rather than saw them lower their weapons. Sarah didn't lower hers. "I'm giving you two options here. Take your hand off her, or I take your head off. I'd decide quick."

"Come now. I think we both realize that 'taking my head off' is easier said than done."

"True. I can be pretty resourceful when the need arises."

"Undoubtedly. You can also be astonishingly rude and obtuse."

"I suppose you would know. Tick tock."

Tense seconds went by before Weaver pulled both arms away from their tasks. Ellison released a harsh breath as the sharp point moved away from his neck, and Savannah shook violently again, even as Weaver stopped touching her shoulder."I apologize, darling; I didn't mean to wake you. Tell me, how was your gymnastics class?"

This wasn't happening. The liquid metal bitch was _not _in her house, hovering over a child that had somehow become hers, speaking to that child as if six months hadn't gone by. "Why are you here?"

Sparing a last look for the petrified girl, Weaver took three steps forward, her movements precise. She remained standing between Savannah and the others. "There are so many answers to that question. However, it's past Savannah's bedtime, and you don't seem in the mood for visitors, so let's stick with the simple ones. Chiefly, I'm here to thank you for looking after Savannah in my absence. You, James," eyes cutting to Charley, "and Mr. Dixon, of course. A pleasure to see you, Mr. Dixon."

Charley was next to, and slightly behind her. Sarah didn't have to look; she could picture the shock on his face without seeing it. The machines still gave him trouble, never mind the more advanced ones, the ones he'd never seen. "You're here to thank us. I didn't buy into that bullshit six months ago, either."

Weaver's eyes narrowed, almost imperceptibly. "I would appreciate it if you refrained from using that kind of language in front of my daughter."

"I'm not yours."

Savannah's voice, clearly terrified, but with an unmistakable tinge of defiance that Sarah had never heard before. Her eyes blazed in a way that Sarah would've remembered, had she seen it earlier.

Weaver's face showed the hint of surprise and something else as she addressed the others. "You've told her then."

"No," Charley refuted, his first word to the cyborg. "She figured that out for herself." He was fighting an urge to empty his clip into Catherine's chest, and his voice showed it.

Weaver half-turned to face Savannah again. Before that happened, Sarah decided that the 'something else' in the machine's expression could be pride. Sarah understood the feeling.

"Very good, darling."

Weaver reached out a hand again. Savannah scooted back from her on the bed. Her voice still quavered, but she didn't flinch this time. "Leave me alone."

"You heard her," said John, tone even. He'd shouldered ahead to stand next to his mother, at the front of the group. Cameron came up on Sarah's other side, next to Charley. John didn't have a weapon, and Sarah wanted to yell at him, wanted to yell at _Cameron _for letting him be stupid like this.

"John Connor. You look well. Greatly improved from the last time I saw you."

John didn't speak immediately. His shoulders were ramrod straight, his jaw clenched. Charley spared half a glance at the boy and, for the first time he could remember, saw his mother there. It was the eyes, Charley decided. He'd had Sarah's eyes already, but the fire in their depths… Charley had seen that from Sarah. John was a different story. Until now.

"Thank you," John said. The words hung in a way that told everyone involved that John wasn't responding to the comment on his physical appearance. He turned his eyes to Cameron and held them there until Cameron echoed his sentiments, addressing Weaver. Then John spoke to her again himself. "Would you please move away from her now?" he asked, voice still steady.

Three more precisely measured steps, away from the bed. "I think you realize John, that if I wished to harm Savannah, I could've done it a thousand times in a thousand ways."

With Weaver's attention away from her, Savannah shook again. The child's name, and the word 'harm' had Sarah tightening her grip on the gun in her hand. John noted both these things without losing focus on Catherine. "You're not helping the situation here."

"Apparently not." To Sarah, "And apparently, you and your boy still have much to talk about."

Fuck. She was showing her cards, her face, her confusion. Ellison's voice forestalled any response Sarah may've given.

"What about _your _boy, John Henry?"

"He's well enough. Obviously we'll be discussing his sudden urge to travel. Shall I give him your regards then, James?"

As she said it, Weaver was already beginning to slink back into the floor, on the verge of disappearing again. "Wait," said Sarah.

Weaver gave another one of those barely noticeable headshakes. "Unfortunately, I can't do that. You know what they say; time and tide wait for no man. Or woman, for that matter."

"You're not a woman," Sarah snarled.

"How very observant of you," Weaver praised, liquid silver crawling up her body. "A minor detail. Now, I have things to discuss with my son, as you do with yours. I'm sure the two of them will meet soon enough, we'll make a day of it." Barely turning her head in Savannah's direction, "You too, darling, we have things to talk about. You behave yourself until I get back."

The ground shifted again, and just like that, there was nothing to show that Catherine Weaver had ever stood there.

* * *

><p>Things happened quickly after that. Sarah crossed to Savannah, Charley on her heels. The kid latched on to Sarah's neck with a strength that shouldn't have been possible for someone her size. Like John before her, Savannah couldn't stop the tears from coming. Cameron, always helpful in emotionally charged situations, was quick to assist this time as well.<p>

"She's urinated. She's had an accident."

Sometime after Weaver's arrival, Savannah had wet the bed. Having this pointed out to her, and everyone else, didn't do much to stop the tears and the shaking.

"Would you get out of here?" Charley barked, either forgetting or not caring that Cameron could turn his spine to powder, if she chose to do so. "Can't you…make sure that _thing _is gone or something?"

"That thing is an advanced model terminator. And no, I can't make sure that she's gone."

"Why not?"

"She's too advanced for me to be able to determine if she's gone or not."

"Go check around," Sarah ordered, Savannah still close to choking her. "See what you can see."

"If Catherine Weaver doesn't wish to be seen, I won't see her."

"Cameron." This time it was John who spoke. Closing his eyes, he forced his tone to lighten. "Please, just check."

Cameron checked, but not before offering a final remark to the child. "You shouldn't be upset. Accidents happen."

Savannah continued to clutch at Sarah. "All right," murmured the brunette, having to fight to put any space between them. "All right. Easy, I've got you. Look at me." Savannah wouldn't at first. Charley rubbed her back and said something comforting, and the kid loosened her hold just enough for Sarah to get what she wanted. "Did she hurt you?" Sarah asked, automatically checking for injuries.

Savannah shook her head no.

Sarah released a breath. She wouldn't have to chase down the metal blob with some sort of jury-rigged, as yet non-existent, thermite weapon. At least not right now.

"Sorry."

It took a moment to decipher the word, the sobbing was that bad. Another moment passed before she realized what Savannah was referring to. "No. Don't be sorry," Sarah said, wishing her voice sounded warmer, wishing she could just stay here and hold Savannah. She didn't have that luxury. Ellison came up behind her, and she left him and Charley to deal with Savannah.

"Let's talk, me and you," she said, voice rough as she strode past John. There was no question that he would follow, no choice in it. Sarah made it to the kitchen before spinning on her heel and rounding on her son.

"You didn't think it might be a good idea to mention that she was back too?"

"You didn't ask." It was Cameron who responded, entering through the back door. "Catherine Weaver appears to have left the property."

Which, as already established, didn't necessarily mean anything. "I didn't ask?" Sarah repeated, voice dangerous. "I didn't _ask_?" Not all the anger was directed at Cameron. That was usually how it worked, actually. Cameron was around, and a machine, so she took the anger, whether it rightfully belonged to her or not. Sarah should've pressed John for answers, but he'd seemed so fragile, even before losing it in the bathroom. Mom won out over rational thinker. She should've pressed Cameron for answers. Whether she'd trust them or not, they would've been better than nothing. Instead, she let herself be goaded into a pissing contest over Charley, let the anger from that get the best of her. Not one of her better nights.

"She didn't know," John said quickly, trying not to fold under the intensity of his mother's gaze. "_We_ didn't know."

"Explain that to me."

"She didn't come back with us. I…I wasn't sure she'd come back at all."

But he'd suspected, strongly. His face told her that much. "So. You and Tin Miss use one time machine-"

"TDE. Time displacement equipment."

"Cameron_."_

Sarah went on as if neither of them had spoken. "Weaver and her pet project use another. Is that it?"

"That's it," Cameron confirmed.

Fucking time machines were a lot more plentiful than Kyle Reese had made out. "John Henry's back, he took your chip."

"He didn't. I gave it to him."

"_Cameron. _Stop helping."

Sarah pretended that John hadn't spoken. "Why?"

"John Henry's survival is essential to John's. John Henry was no longer safe in his previous location."

"So you and John Henry put your processors together, and the logical thing to do was get the hell out of Dodge."

"Dodge?"

"Jumping ahead. The most logical thing you two could come up with was to run off into the future. Am I getting this?"

"Yes, getting the hell out of Dodge was the logical thing. And yes, you are getting this."

Like hell she was. "You gave him your chip. And yet here you are, gracing us with your presence. And apparently, John Henry's here too, somewhere. Tell me how that works."

"I can't."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure."

"You're not sure why you can't tell me?"

"No. I can't tell you because I'm not sure."

She was going to blow her own brains out. Really, she was going to take out her gun, save Skynet a shitload of trouble, and leave Cameron to clean up the mess. "John?"

"She doesn't know how she got the chip back, or the new body."

"She doesn't know. How exactly does she not know?"

"I have no recollection of what went on after giving my chip to John Henry. My last memory, after what happened six months ago, is waking up in this body."

No memory. Just like she had no memory of what she'd done before the reprogramming. "That's incredibly convenient."

"No, not really."

Rather than put her gun barrel in her mouth, Sarah switched focus to John again. "Amnesia. Talk."

"I don't know what to say."

He didn't know. Cameron didn't know. They might as well just record themselves saying the phrase and play the fucking tape every time Sarah asked a question. "How do you not know, John? Didn't you bring her back, isn't that why you left?"

"Mom…"

"You left to save her. Isn't that why you've been gone for six months? You left, you're here, she's here. Obviously, something went according to plan. So again I ask, _how do you not know_?" The anger snuck up on her. It'd been quietly building, yet it still snuck up on her. John looked young and shame-faced, and somehow that only made it worse. He opened his mouth and she cut him off. "Dammit John-"

"Sarah." Charley's voice was gentle as he exited the hallway, joining them in the kitchen. "Calm down."

Calm down. She'd thought her son lost for six months, possibly dead. He'd left her, with no guarantee of return. She'd gone against her better judgment, waited for answers, and wasn't getting them. And Charley wanted her to calm down.

"Mom-"

"Give me something, John. Anything. Anything besides 'I don't know,' because that's not cutting it."

"Sarah-"

"Stay out of this!"

Charley's eyes went hard and narrow. Sarah hadn't done the dismissing-him-out-of-hand thing in awhile. Charley hadn't missed it. He'd thought they were past it. If they weren't, Charley realized, then there was a problem. John wasn't his son, but he'd grieved for the boy, regardless. After the bank, after Zeira Corp. Staying out of this wasn't an option anymore. When Charley spoke again, there was no gentleness to his voice.

"Sarah. Back off."

The tone, coming from him, was sharp enough to catch Sarah's attention. Blinking, she tore her eyes from John and Cameron. "Charley…"

The inflection, the way her eyes were slicing into him, those things would've scared anyone else. Maybe they still scared _him _a bit, but not enough to do the sensible thing. "Back off," he repeated, voice still cool. "You wanted him to talk, let him talk."

In a way, this standoff was just as intense as the one in Savannah's room. John's eyes flew between his mother and Charley. Even Cameron seemed mildly interested. Long moments later, Sarah broke from Charley's gaze. Tension still rolling off her, she turned and pulled out two of the kitchen chairs, claiming one for herself. She made a gesture, and John sat down as well. Her gaze was still cold bordering on glacial, but she didn't protest when Charley took a seat next to her.

"Whatever it is that you _do _know, you tell me. Right now."

For a second, John wilted under her gaze. Terminators had nothing on his mother. He swallowed hard, forcing himself to look at her. "Nothing went according to plan. There _was _no plan. I wanted to save her, I didn't."

"She's here."

"Not because of me."

He'd looked for her, he said, looked for her while trying to be a soldier. Six months here had been close to a year there, he wasn't precisely sure how long. Time was marked in battles rather than days. He'd looked for her, him…whatever you called a machine that looked like a man, that was carrying the chip of a machine programmed to be female. He'd fought for his life in a future he wasn't meant to see yet, and he'd struggled. He wasn't the fighter his mother was, not yet. He wasn't the tactical genius that Future-John was reputed to be. He was a kid who'd jumped ahead, skipped over whatever training and experience would make him an adult. He told them this without using the exact words, but neither his mother nor Charley were stupid, they got the gist.

"You thanked Weaver. Why?"

John closed his eyes. "Weaver stayed away from me. Most of the time. Sometimes she didn't. Sometimes, there were fights, bad ones, with the machines."

"You're saying there were good ones?" Sarah asked.

"I'm saying…there were times when I should've died, _would've_. I didn't. Because Weaver stepped in, just enough to keep that from happening."

So she owed her son's life to the metal bitch. Great. Rather than comment, Sarah gestured for him to continue.

John closed his eyes. In the span of a few seconds, he'd chosen one future over another. His mother thought he'd chosen Cameron over her, he knew that. John wanted to say it wasn't true, but couldn't. He'd chosen to be a hero and go after Cameron. There'd been no heroics. Just months and months of cold and death, and, as usual, getting his ass pulled from the fire by a female terminator. And one day, after she'd done that again, she'd also led him to Cameron.

"Just like that," Sarah pressed, after he'd explained himself.

"Just like that."

She'd almost forgotten that Cameron was there. The metal girl had been still as a statue all through this, staring out the kitchen window.

"Why? Why then?"

"You'd have to ask her."

"You didn't?"

"If Catherine Weaver wishes to withhold information-"

"Okay," Sarah said, cutting Cameron off. "I get it. So she's the one who brought you back?"

"It would seem that way."

"And she's the one who wiped your memory files?"

"It would seem that way."

Sarah sighed. How often was anything what it seemed to be? "And I suppose you don't know _why _she would do that."

"That's hard to say."

Of course it was. Such a wealth of information. What Sarah _did _manage to pull from John, Catherine Weaver apparently wanted peace. "You've spoken to her about this?"

"Not…extensively."

"But enough to know that she wants peace."

"That's what she says. She helped me, Mom. I don't know how else to explain that."

So the best explanation was that Catherine Weaver really _was _just a simple, peace-loving machine, who wanted nothing more than to wear tie dye clothing and sing Kumbaya. "Helping you, creating this machine that's supposed to help you, is she doing that under your orders, Future-You?"

John looked away. "She wasn't much for long conversations." Mostly it'd been get in, keep him alive, get out before the other Resistance fighters saw her and pulled their plasma rifles.

Sarah sighed. Six months ago, Weaver said they had a common enemy. Common enemy didn't have to mean that they were on the same side. If she'd learned nothing else from what happened to Riley, she'd learned that. "So. You're home, and so are you," Sarah said, nodding towards Cameron. "And that's all because of Weaver, the benevolent, hippie terminator. Is that an accurate summary?"

"Yes, it's accurate."

It was Cameron who spoke, and it was Cameron that Sarah addressed. "And you, you have amnesia?"

"I have gaps in my memory banks that can't be explained."

"So, amnesia."

"Amnesia," the cyborg confirmed.

"Awesome." Because it would be cheating for them to have any real answers, that would be against the script, against the rules. Savannah's arrival, the look on her face, kept Sarah's frustration from reaching critical mass. Ellison was with her. He'd cleaned the girl up and done the necessary laundry after her accident, and Sarah murmured her gratitude as he passed, saying something about needing air. Cameron made him uneasy, Sarah knew. The cyborg had that effect on people.

Charley hugged Savannah goodnight, brushing his lips to her cheek and speaking near her ear as he did. Whatever he said made Savannah smile, however tremulous the expression was. Charley was good like that, good at putting people at ease. When he was done with Savannah, Sarah caught his eye. She wasn't sure what she was doing, whether she was apologizing or not, whether he needed it if she was. Charley looked as weary as Sarah felt, but he still offered her that crooked smile that signified so much between them. This time, it meant that they were okay, and some of Sarah's exhaustion eased. Charley, always good like that.

* * *

><p>Savannah's hair was damp from the bath. Sarah sat with her on the freshly-laundered bedding and brushed it out, taking longer than necessary. She'd first done this right after John left, and the girl had found it soothing. Sarah felt the same way. Combing through the red locks was a simple, repetitive thing, and normally it was enough to calm Sarah down. The strategy was even more effective than cleaning the gun collection or laying into the punching bag until she was ready to collapse. Usually. Tonight, Sarah combed through long hair, fighting thoughts of how closely Savannah resembled the terminator who'd come calling earlier.<p>

"Okay," Sarah declared, after dragging out the process as long as she could. Savannah hadn't relaxed against her, as she usually did. She'd calmed, but not completely, and Sarah was past the point of knowing what to do. "Under the covers with you."

Expecting a protest, or a request to sleep in her and Charley's room, Sarah was surprised when the child obeyed without complaint, staying silent until the comforter was pulled over her body.

"She said she was coming back."

Sarah released a controlled breath. There was anxiety in Savannah's voice, despite the girl's attempts to hide it. Perching herself on the edge of the bed, Sarah brushed red hair back from Savannah's face, staring into wide eyes. Weaver's words came back to her. The machine _could _have harmed Savannah a thousand times before. She hadn't. Didn't mean Sarah was okay with the way Catherine had run her hand along the child's arm. Had that been a possessive gesture? Sarah wasn't sure now. Everything had happened fast, the adrenaline kept her from remembering the exact nature of every moment. It _could _have been possessive though; Sarah was unable to rule that out.

"She's not going to hurt you. She's not going to do _anything_ to you. You understand me?"

Sarah had made a similar promise once, when they first moved to this place. Savannah nodded then, confirmed her understanding, just like now. Shockingly, she seemed to accept the words, even after tonight's confirmation that alarms, guns, and the presence of family wasn't enough to keep Weaver away, if she wanted to be here. And still, somehow, Savannah trusted Sarah's words, at least trusted them enough. She'd forgotten what it was like, that acceptance. John hadn't trusted her that way in a very long time.

Sitting up in bed, Savannah reached out small arms, drawing Sarah into a surprisingly tight hug. "You promise, right?"

Closing her eyes, Sarah ghosted her lips over Savannah's temple. "Yeah. I promise."

She meant it. No matter that Weaver was more powerful than any of them, even Cameron. No matter what the terminator's reasons for helping her son, Sarah had no intention of trading one child for another.

* * *

><p>Sleep was hard to come by that night, for everyone who actually needed it. Cameron paced the house, following Sarah's orders to pay special attention to Savannah's room. Sarah would never admit aloud to finding some bit of safety in the sound of Cameron's footsteps. That aside, Charley still woke to an empty bed, just after dawn had scraped over the horizon.<p>

He showered and dressed, irrationally happy to find no sign of the machine. After that, he found Sarah dozing in Savannah's bed, holding the girl close. It was a sight that would've warmed Charley's heart, if he didn't know why Sarah had gotten so clingy. And it _was _Sarah. Charley had trained himself to Savannah's footsteps. If the kid had entered their room, Charley would've known. Sarah, she still had the ability to slip away from him. Necessity made Charley push that thought aside, necessity, and John's arrival.

Clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, the boy said nothing as he observed his mother. She was sleeping, but she didn't look peaceful. She frowned, even as she rested, and one of her hands was clenching the comforter. Savannah was a different story. The redhead was snuggled against Sarah, head under the brunette's chin. She looked relaxed. She looked like how John remembered feeling at her age. Like his mother's arms could protect him from anything. Even after her post-apocalyptic bedtime stories, she'd managed to make him feel safe, even if that wasn't what she wanted.

Charley studied John as John studied his mother. The older man wasn't sure exactly what he was seeing there. Not jealousy, definitely not that. Longing maybe, longing for a different time, a different place. Before he could comment, John gave the pair a last look and headed towards the kitchen.

Charley hesitated in the doorway before crossing into Savannah's room. He tried to be quiet about it, but Sarah still stirred when he adjusted the blanket over her shoulders. She could still slip away, and he still had difficulty getting anything past her. She went tense for a few rough seconds, before realizing where she was, who she was with. Her eyes went to Savannah first, still sound asleep, then they found Charley.

'What's wrong?" she asked, voice low, but worried. "John-"

"He's fine. Everyone's fine." Charley had finally learned not to say 'safe.' Ever. On a long list of trigger words, that was one of the more dangerous choices.

"John's not fine. He's not."

Charley closed his eyes momentarily, because there really wasn't a valid defense for that. "Right now, he's as fine as we can expect him to be, I think."

Shaking her head, Sarah tried to get up. There were things to do, lots of them, like always. Savannah whimpered in her sleep, freezing Sarah in place.

Charley leaned down from his position over the bed, brushing his forehead against Sarah's and speaking close to her ear. "I know he needs you, but Savannah needs this. So do you."

Sarah closed her eyes, because she could do nothing else. She'd been the one to come in here, and Charley knew it. "I'll be out in five minutes."

"Ten."

"Seven."

Smiling softly, Charley cupped her cheek, quickly brushing his lips against hers. "Seven then. I'll take care of John."

He left, and Sarah watched him do it, thinking of how those words wouldn't mean much from nearly anyone else. Taking care of John had always been her job, and she'd always doubted anyone else's ability to do it. It was hard to doubt Charley on anything he said, it always had been.

* * *

><p>Charley found John standing in the middle of the kitchen. Standing, looking, and doing little else. There was a distance in the boy's gaze, as if he wasn't quite where he appeared to be. "John?"<p>

John blinked a few times, gaze moving to Charley. "I'm fine," he said.

Charley frowned. There was no anger in the response, no petulance, but there wasn't much else, either. "I didn't ask," Charley said lightly, moving past John and towards the fridge. "You've got to be starving.

"I could definitely eat."

He hadn't eaten last night. Charley didn't want to guess how long it'd been since he had a halfway decent meal. "Your mom will be up soon, I'm sure she'll be happy to rustle up some pancakes."

John's lips curved up. Some things didn't change, no matter what havoc was wrought on which timeline. Then his face went serious again. "Charley."

Turning at the somberness of the boy's tone, Charley set down the juice he'd grabbed from the refrigerator. "John?"

"Thank you. For…for mom. Taking care of her."

Charley tried not to squirm under the intensity of John's gaze, even as a warm feeling fought to envelop his heart. "John-"

"I know you did," the boy interrupted. "Thank you."

"You know what your mom would say if she heard that?" Charley teased.

"Yeah. She still needed to be taken care of, even if she won't admit it. We…we all need to take care of each other."

John's voice had changed slightly, and that distance was back in his gaze. "You're welcome, Johnny."

John blinked again, repeatedly, eyes sweeping over his surroundings before they locked on to Charley. "Sorry. This…it's a lot to get used to again," Pausing, John studied the tile under his feet. "I keep thinking I'm going to wake up."

John kept looking down, and Charley tried to keep himself from wondering. There'd been moments since his return when John seemed like a different person, a stronger one. Charley wondered what had happened to cause that, even as he realized that John was still nowhere near the man Sarah promised he'd grow into.

"It'll get easier. Might not seem like it now, but-"

John shook his head, meeting Charley's eyes again. "It's okay. I'm fine."

Again, no anger, and again, Charley worried. "Why don't you sit down? I'll heat up some soup." Sarah wouldn't take long, which meant that the pancakes wouldn't take long, but John somehow looked thinner in the early morning light, and Charley couldn't fight the need to do _something_, anything.

"No. Let's…I can wait for everyone else. Can you just…?"

John made a vague gesture in the direction of the table. Offering a weak, but genuine smile, Charley squeezed John's shoulder before preceding him across the kitchen. They sat opposite each other at the table and again, Charley found himself trying not to squirm. John was looking at him differently now, with a different sort of intensity that Charley didn't have a word for.

"Are you going to ask?"

"Ask what?" Charley questioned, countering the apprehension in John's tone by keeping his own voice calm.

"About what happened there."

He wanted to. There was so much yet to cover. After the non-information about Weaver, John had essentially shut down again. "You feel like telling me, you'll tell me."

John dropped Charley's gaze for a moment, looking off to the left. "Mom's going to ask."

Charley nodded slightly. "She's worried about you."

John's mouth quirked again as he returned his eyes to the man across from him. "She's always worried about me."

"True. Is that the worst thing in the world?"

Closing his eyes to the concern in Charley's features, John rubbed at an ache in his forehead. His mother's love _wasn't _the worst thing in the world. Recalling how hard he'd worked to push her away, that came close. Explaining that he'd left her to be a hero for Cameron, that he'd failed in that, that the only reason he was even back now was because… Explaining all that, the prospect of telling her what he hadn't yet, that was a lot closer to worst thing in the world status.

"She worried a lot, while you were gone." Charley said the words carefully, keeping them free of judgment. He wasn't trying to pour salt in the wound, but he felt the words needed to be said, just once. Charley remembered too easily the nights of Sarah crying when she thought he couldn't hear. There'd been times she made her hands close to bloody, using the punching bag to cope with all the sadness.

"I know that she worried," John replied, immediately regretting his tone.

Charley frowned, at the sudden attitude shift, even as John looked down in shame. His response, the way he gave it, it felt like old arguments. It sounded like a reaction to a well-worn subject, though they'd never spoken of this before. Charley replayed the strange looks from John, then he replayed last night, at the warehouse. John had said something, or started to, while they were hugging. Something about a promise Charley had made. Before last night, Charley hadn't seen the boy since Michelle's death. He hadn't talked then, all his energy focused on avoiding a complete and total breakdown. He'd been too distraught to speak, and he certainly hadn't made John any promises. Which meant…

"John," he began. That was as far as he got, before the machine stepped through the front door. She offered them a quick look, eyes lingering momentarily on John before moving down the hallway, presumably to continue her rounds. Charley's eyes flew to John's as the metal walked away. The boy's eyes carried a lot as he looked at the machine, more than Charley could decipher. John reminded him of Sarah in that moment. So much. So much of everything. More than he'd ever truly understand.

"So," Charley said, knowing he was entering dangerous waters, but feeling he had no choice. "You and the cyborg girl…?"

"Cameron," John corrected wearily. "Her name is Cameron." He was confusing Charley, and he knew it. He didn't think he could explain his hot and cold reactions to the cyborg. In fact, he _knew _he couldn't.

"Cameron. Sorry." The metal girl was hard for him to deal with. It'd been that way even before she went bad, even before the other machine took his wife away. He was trying, but Charley had never been able to wrap his head around John's choice that day. The choice to leave his mother for the machine. "Can I ask what's going on with you two?"

"Nothing," John replied, with that same tone of weariness. It wasn't enough, he knew that. He didn't feel up to explaining all that had changed since he jumped, but that hardly meant he wouldn't have to.

"You took one hell of a chance for her," Charley prodded, voice as neutral as he could make it.

John nodded, more to himself than to Charley. "I did, yeah."

Again, too many emotions for Charley to identify. Anger, sadness… John had left Sarah, left his time, to get the machine back. Last night, he'd seemed cool to her, except when he was forcing himself not to be that way. And yet there was more than anger and sadness in John's eyes when he looked at her, and he'd corrected Charley on using the cyborg's name. "Do you regret it?" Charley asked gently.

John rubbed at his forehead again, voice ragged when he answered. "No,"

"You love her?" Charley asked, after a small pause.

He'd anticipated the question, and still, John struggled with the answer. It seemed like forever ago, since he'd stepped into that time bubble. He guessed that he must've loved Cameron in that moment, for him to sacrifice what he had. Whatever love meant for a sixteen-year-old who'd met his first terminator the day after kissing his first girl, who's first girlfriend had been brought back to keep him away from a second terminator. He must've loved Cameron, whatever that meant for someone who'd never been in love before. He'd held a gun on Charley, on Derek, on his _mother_, to save her. Then he'd walked away from his mother, so he could do it again. So, there had to be love there.

"Look John, if you don't want to-"

"Do you know what she said to me, after that night in the junkyard? She said that I couldn't be trusted. And, do you know what she said to me, right before we came back here? She said that I'd made a mistake. Again."

Rationally, John knew he couldn't blame her for that. From Cameron's perspective, from most anyone's perspective, coming after her had been a stupid move. John couldn't disagree with them. And he couldn't expect Cameron to disagree either. He didn't know _what _he'd expected when he finally got her back, but criticism and nothing else hadn't been it.

His attitude towards her had changed from what it'd been after Sarkissian. He couldn't trick himself into thinking that she was dead inside, that she didn't experience some form of feelings. Maybe she even felt some form of love towards him. She'd overridden her directives to kill him, she'd tried keeping John Henry safe, so she could keep _him _safe. Maybe that was more than programming.

"There was a girl there. Allison." John didn't know where that had come from. He had no intention of explaining terminators being modeled after people, not when Charley hadn't even had a cup of coffee yet. He didn't want to talk about Allison, but somehow he did. He couldn't explain to Charley that he hadn't been able to see Allison Young without seeing Cameron, or that he couldn't look at Cameron now without seeing Allison.

"A girl. Did you…?"

"No," John replied before Charley could ask if he'd fallen in love with Cameron's double. "She was…she was a friend. A good person who didn't deserve what happened to her." The same could be said for so many people. Most everyone he'd ever given a damn about, in fact. John felt his headache worsening as his throat and chest tightened up.

Charley didn't know if he would've pressed for answers on that or not. John said last night that everyone had died for him, but he hadn't said anything about this Allison. Sarah's arrival made it a non-issue. He locked eyes with her as she joined them at the table, taking a seat next to him.

John wasn't sure how much she'd heard, but the look on his mother's face told him that it'd been enough. "Cameron and I aren't…I'm not _with _Cameron."

"I might've guessed that last night," Sarah replied, keeping her tone gentle, even as her eyes bored into his. It amazed her even now, seeing her own eyes reflected back at her. "You think that makes me happy?"

John ducked his head in shame. He doubted his mother would shed any tears over not having Cameron as a daughter-in-law. At the same time, he knew how stupid he'd been after Sarkissian. Long hours in dark, lonely tunnels had provided time to think on his own behavior, on hers. It was ridiculous now, the notion that his mom wished him to be unhappy. He'd figured that out for himself, even before it'd been told to him.

"I think I'm supposed to be alone."

"John," Sarah murmured, having no idea what to do for the look of suppressed agony on his face. "Did Cameron tell you this?" she asked, remembering a conversation with the metal, had over the vat of thermite that could've been her grave.

John sighed, everything about him screaming of heaviness. "No. Not Cameron. This is me talking. And I'm the one who…who chose to leave."

Sarah couldn't look away from him, John wouldn't let her. She read what he was saying, what couldn't be said aloud. She'd blamed so much on Cameron, out of convenience, out of a need to defend her son, even to herself. She hadn't liked the way John behaved around the metal, but John's behavior was still his own. "That's not what I want for you," she told him. "Being alone."

"It's not what I want, either. I don't want to be that person, that leader who always has to lose everything."

Sarah closed her eyes. Charley took her hand under the table, but it wasn't enough to settle her. She couldn't do this again, spend the remaining few years arguing with him about something neither of them had a choice in.

John saw the look on her face, saw what she was thinking. The hand that wasn't under the table was on top of it. Grasping his mother's fingers in his own, John poured everything he had into his next words. "I don't want to see the things that I saw there. Not again. No one should have to live that. I want to stop it, Mom. I _need _to. I need you, and Cameron…I need all of you. We _all _need to stop it."

'We,' not 'she.' Big difference from last time. Dropping Charley's hand and pulling out of John's grasp, Sarah stood up and moved to her son. Still sitting down, he didn't fight when she pulled him against her. Rubbing his back with one hand, she combed through short hair with the other.

Dammit, he was almost shaking again. His mother's arms still felt like the safest place in the world, even if that was an illusion. John held on to her, trying not to let all of the losses hit him again. He wasn't ready to feel that yet.

"All right. We're here now, all of us. We'll stop it."

John felt her lips on the top of his head, heard the love in her voice. If she was disappointed, she was hiding it well. He didn't see how she couldn't be disappointed. He hadn't been a great military leader, or even a particularly good soldier. All her hopes for him had come to nothing. But she kept holding him, and somehow that made him feel better, allowed him to think clearer. The world he'd jumped into, he wasn't meant to see it, not yet. So much time, so much potential training, all of it skipped over. Just because he wasn't the John Connor of his mother's stories now, didn't mean that he _couldn't _be. He didn't want to be that person, to live in a world where that person had to exist. He wanted to stop that from happening. But if he couldn't, he needed to be ready for it. He hadn't been ready for what the future held before, but he wouldn't make that mistake again.

John felt Charley's hand on his forearm, and it almost broke him. He didn't have to ask to know that Charley had included himself in his mother's promise. A noise caught his attention, and John pulled back just enough to seek out its source. Cameron, back from her latest circuit of the house. John thought he saw a flicker of something in her face before it turned blank again. She kept watching him, with that blank expression, showing no reaction to the fact that he was close to crying again.

And that was much of the issue, wasn't it? Maybe John loved her, even after a year apart, even after nothing more than her continued assertion that his feelings for her made him untrustworthy. Maybe she loved him, in her own way. Maybe she'd loved Future-John, and that'd been enough, for both of them. But right now, on the verge of losing it again, John needed more than that, and Cameron couldn't give it to him. He didn't doubt that she was evolving to some extent, he couldn't legitimately blame her for not doing it fast enough. But the truth was, he was nowhere near able to understand her feelings at this point, never mind his own. Maybe that would change one day, when he turned into the John Connor everyone needed him to be. The timing for so many things in his life had gotten so fucked up. And timing was important. Technically, it'd taken Charley and his mom more than eight years to get it together. And, for the time being, John couldn't separate Cameron from Allison, not completely. And he couldn't think of Allison without thinking of all the others he'd lost in the last year.

At the same time, he refused to fall into the trap that'd ensnared him after Sarkissian's death. He'd felt that happening last night, and done nothing. This morning would be different. This _time _would be different. Easing back from his mother, John offered her a soft smile. She hesitated a moment, brushed cool fingers across his cheek, then resumed her place next to Charley.

"Everything okay?" John asked, trying hard to fight back all the emotions that came from looking at her. "Everything's good around here?"

Cameron tilted her head minutely. "Everything's good."

There was a pause, an awkward one. For lack of anything better to do, Sarah fell back on tried and true methods. "I'll make pancakes."

"I'll reheat the soup," Charley declared, pushing down his uneasiness towards the cyborg and taking his cue from Sarah.

"I'll recheck the perimeter," Cameron declared, exiting the backdoor to begin another circuit of the property.

* * *

><p>Breakfast was an interesting affair, for reasons other than the pancake and fish soup combination. Ellison and Savannah joined them shortly before food was to be served. Just after their arrival, Cameron again reentered the kitchen. After several minutes of watching the cyborg watch everyone else eat, Sarah made an annoyed sort of gesture towards the single remaining chair.<p>

"You might as well sit down," she said gruffly.

Cameron, who'd been observing them from near the sink, sat down, while Sarah wondered what the hell she was doing. Except she already had an idea about that. Things hadn't been perfect before the car bomb went off, but Sarah had at least felt some form of unity in her household. Then everything had changed, and not for the better. Sarah could acknowledge, to herself at least, her role in what'd happened. What had passed for her family had fallen apart, and she could've done things differently. She wanted that sense of unity back. The machines had an easy enough time tearing them apart, no need to help things along.

Cameron didn't take any food. Charley regarded her from across the table, his expression a mixture of curiosity and wariness. "So, I guess cyborgs don't need to eat."

"No, they don't. I dislike the taste of fish," Cameron declared, eyes moving to the bowl in front of Charley.

Savannah was watching Cameron too. "I like gummi bears," she offered tentatively. "Do you like gummi bears?"

"I'm not sure. Possibly."

"We should get some and find out."

"Candy for breakfast," Sarah muttered. "How healthy." Her eyes went to John, who was devouring his food as if he expected it to disappear. Derek used to do that, until Sarah threatened to bash his skull in for the first of many times. She understood John's behavior, but still. Savannah was watching him too now, and Sarah did _not _need the girl picking up Reese-type table manners. "We don't live in a barn," she stated.

John swallowed a bite of pancake before answering. "And?" he asked

"And we don't eat like pigs," she replied. "You're going to make yourself sick."

"I'll be fine, Mom."

"Buddy used to eat like that," Savannah declared, watching John inhale his food. "Can we get another dog?"

"No."

The response was actually two responses. Sarah and Cameron had spoken the same word at the same time. Shooting the machine an annoyed look, Sarah repeated her words to John. "We _don't _live in a barn."

Sensing that she was fighting a losing battle, Charley touched her knee under the table. "Sarah."

"He'll be sick."

"And you'll be right, and he'll have learned his lesson."

Sarah shoved his hand off her knee, but said nothing more on the subject.

"I think it'd be fun to live in a barn," Savannah declared after long minutes of silence.

"It wouldn't," Cameron argued. "Barns are unsanitary." Switching focus, the machine addressed Charley. "That is an excessive amount of butter."

Charley looked at his pancake before looking at Cameron. "Is it."

"It is. Butter raises cholesterol. Excess cholesterol raises the probability of premature death due to heart failure."

Sarah closed her eyes. Cameron and her morning small talk. Charley was looking at her now, as if expecting her to handle this in some way. "You _do _use a lot of butter."

Before Charley could respond, John pushed his chair back and bolted down the hallway.. Seconds later, retching noises could be heard from the bathroom. Apparently a year of near starvation and an overload of pancakes and fish soup did not mix well.

Sarah half-listened to the sound of her son puking, while her other ear focused on Cameron's explanation to Charley about just how much more likely he'd be to die an early death if he continued his excessive butter consumption. Ellison, quiet up to now, left the table with his empty dishware in hand, speaking to her as he passed.

"I'm sure you've missed these family breakfasts."

"Go to hell," Sarah replied, only to face an admonishment from Savannah about using bad words.

* * *

><p><strong>(another) Author's Note: <strong>If you didn't get this already, no, I'm not diametrically opposed to Jameron. I simply think that on the show, John was still too immature to handle a true relationship with the Tin Miss, and Cameron hadn't evolved enough for that relationship to be possible yet. Obviously, I think that _could've _changed, given the proper amount of time. Do I have any interest in telling the story of that evolution? No. It's been done a hundred times, by people more qualified to write it, and I literally have nothing to add. So, one final plea. If you can't accept that, please, _please_, don't yell at me for not writing a story that I never claimed to be writing.

To the three and a half people who still care to read this, thank you kindly. This chapter is dedicated to the other two thirds of my brain. You guys are sweetchotic gorks and I thank you for your constant, infuriating nagging. Now leave me alone for a few days, would you?


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: **First off, let me apologize for the wait. Life, school, writer's laze, and a certain someone have been distracting me from the noble pursuit of fanfic. However, I split this chapter up for the sake of my own sanity, which means that the other half is pretty well in my head, so hopefully the next update won't be so sickeningly long in coming.

Before you get into this, fair warning. If you didn't read chapters 10 and 11 of my previous story, you might want to skim them before going on. A character from there is reappearing here, back by popular demand. Well actually, only 2 people demanded it, and I planned to bring him back from the moment I first wrote him but anyway…I've tried to include all the relevant backstory here, but there's at least one joke that won't make sense without knowledge of chapter 11. Read it or don't, but if you're confused about anything, I'd refer back to the chapters mentioned above.

As always, thanks to those who commented previously, I'd love it if you nice reader people would drop some feedback on your way out. Oh, and to my two favorite stalkers, you guys owe me voice-type messages, don't forget. Happy day-after-Halloween to all, and to all a TSCC-filled night.

* * *

><p>In certain ways, it was like nothing had changed. Cameron still paced the property like the world's most sophisticated guard dog, Sarah still threw out the occasional bionic Barbie joke, James and Charley still did their best to stay out of Sarah's way when she was hit with a particularly bad mood. It'd been more than a few days since John and Cameron returned, and most everyone seemed desperate to establish some kind of routine, some kind of pattern.<p>

As routines went, John was doing a decent job of following his old one. He and Cameron were still nameless. His mother was taking longer than usual to acquire the new ID's, and John suspected he knew why. She blamed it on lack of contacts, and she refused to use any of the people Cameron suggested. She was making an effort with the terminator, but it was an effort made in small steps. Still, John wasn't buying her explanation for why he and Cameron didn't have identities yet. His mother was distracted, pure and simple. There weren't many things that could distract Sarah Connor, but John knew enough to realize that he himself was at the top of that list.

Without a name, John was confined to the house, hence the reestablishment of old routines. He paced the house like a restless animal, unable to keep still. And again, like old times, his mother was there. Hovering over him, even as she tried not to. She'd always gotten a little extra clingy whenever they moved, and this time her distraction, her maternal concern, was amplified to the tenth power.

Not everything was the same though. John wasn't always restless. Every member of the household, at one point or another, found him stiff as a statue, looking off into what should've been nothing, but obviously wasn't. He was home, but in a lot of ways, he _wasn't _really. Late at night, with Charley holding her, Sarah wondered and worried aloud, about whether he'd ever truly be home again.

She was hovering and she knew it, and she couldn't do a damn thing about it. She touched him impulsively, compulsively. Hair, cheek, whatever she had any chance of getting away with. Another change in routine, John let her do it, most of the time. No sighs, no eye rolling, just a warm smile and a loving look in those eyes that mirrored her own. More than simply putting up with the contact, John seemed to revel in it, seemed to need it just as badly as his mother. Hard as she tried, Sarah couldn't remember the last time it'd been like that between them.

Most of the time, John didn't have a problem with his mother's affections. But occasionally, during those times before he turned into the statue his mom always wanted him to be when there weren't any names, John needed a break. From everything. Even the mother he'd missed so desperately for close to a year. Sarah wasn't good with breaks, wasn't good with the idea of John struggling on his own. Fortunately, Charley was there during those times. He calmed her enough so that John could have the space he needed and, in turn, kept John from snapping at his mother as he'd been known to do in the past.

He was playing that role this morning, just before sunrise. The air was cool, not sweltering, as it would be soon enough. There'd been talk of finding a bigger house, but until the ID's came, talk was all it amounted to. As Charley moved away from the back entrance, towards the fire pit and picnic table, he couldn't help but hope that the relocation would be soon. He'd gotten used to the desert, and he'd forgiven Sarah and himself for the fact that Michelle had _died _in the desert. Adaptation and forgiveness didn't erase terrible memories, and Charley couldn't say he'd be sorry to leave this place, even though there'd been lots of good memories here too.

John was lying on his back atop the picnic table, hands pillowing his head. Charley couldn't tell if the boy was sleeping or not. What he did know, Sarah had panicked a little when she found his bed empty. She'd never liked not knowing her son's whereabouts, and losing him for, to them, six months, hadn't helped with that. When she'd seen him out here through the kitchen window, Charley had fought a minor battle to speak to John himself. Sarah's concern didn't always read like concern, and Charley had a feeling that John might not deal well today if she berated him for going out into the cold with no weapon, no warning, and no Cameron.

Charley approached the table John was using as a bed, realizing that the kid was in fact sleeping, albeit restlessly. He twitched and frowned, like his mother did much of the time. There were no sounds of distress. Usually, there weren't any with Sarah either, unless the nightmares were particularly bad. Mother and son had trained themselves to display control, even as they slept. Still, Charley knew the signs of a Connor fighting bad dreams, didn't matter whether it was the woman he loved, or the boy he loved like a son.

"John," he said quietly, noting the gooseflesh covering the kid's arm. Charley was dressed for the temperature, but John wore a white sleep shirt that offered no protection. "Johnny."

It happened incredibly fast. At the feel of a hand on his arm, John shot up with wide eyes, ready for a fight. If not for Sarah's training and the substantial improvement of Charley's reflexes, the older man would've suffered a great amount of pain. Fortunately, things had changed, and not all of them for the worst. Charley blocked John's automatic attack, staying calm and steady, even as the boy struggled against him.

"John. Johnny. Hey. Hey, it's me, John. It's just me, all right? You're fine, you're okay."

It took several long beats for the words to register, several more before John realized where he was. He stopped struggling after that, the fear in his eyes replaced with other emotions.

Charley released John's hands, trying to smile instead of frown. John was looking at him as he sometimes did in a way that made the older man…not uncomfortable exactly, but something close to it. The looks had started the day he and John talked at the kitchen table, and the boy showed no sign of wanting to explain what they meant. He offered things in small increments, people he'd known, information he'd gleaned, and pushing him when he didn't want to talk hadn't gone well. Charley was infinitely more patient than Sarah, but even he was getting desperate for more answers, even as he reminded himself that it hadn't been very long. He'd caught Ellison at the computer, looking up facts on PTSD. Lots of symptoms, lots of which John was exhibiting to some extent or another. That little Google session reaffirmed what Charley already knew, that they'd have to be very careful in their dealings with John and his emotions.

The boy in question was swinging his legs over the table, shoulders slumping as the adrenaline bled out. That indecipherable expression had been replaced by one of abject horror at what he'd almost done.

"Jesus. Charley, I didn't…"

"It's okay," Charley repeated. "No harm done."

"I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry."

"John," said the older man, more firmly this time, but still with reassurance. "Nothing to be sorry for. I should've known better, and I'm used to it."

"How's that?" John asked, standing in bare feet, on legs that still wanted to shake a little.

"Your mom," was the simple reply. Charley had saved his lover from more than a few nightmares in the last few months, and he'd also learned that there was a certain amount of skill involved. Quick and careful was the only way to avoid accidental injury. Even with practice, Charley still came close to a black eye every once in awhile.

John offered a weak smile, even as his face contorted into something else. "Happy as I am for you, let's not talk about you and my mom sharing a bed." He might've survived a post-apocalyptic horror show, but the merest suggestion of his mother engaging in intimate activities still made him want to run far, far away.

"Sorry." Charley faced the boy for long moments, sharing his grin, before growing serious again. "It's cold out here."

John shrugged, half-turning and looking off to the left. "I guess." He didn't feel cold the same way anymore, not after experiencing the cold of the future."

Charley moved until they were side by side, shoving his hands in his pockets and keeping his voice neutral. "Your mom was worried."

John closed his eyes momentarily. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. Woke up last night, felt like looking at the stars." John thought it a small miracle that Cameron hadn't tried following him. He'd met her in the hallway, she'd asked where he was going, he'd told her, and that was it. His mother had her keeping a close eye on Savannah, and John thought that to be part of why he was on a longer leash. Obviously, Cameron hadn't been readily available when mom and Charley woke up to find him gone.

Charley nodded at John's explanation, but said nothing. The boy had mentioned things since he returned, about how clean the air was, about forgetting what this or that looked or felt like. Charley guessed that a post-Judgment Day sky must look very different from this one. Sarah told him more and more that John reminded her of Derek. All the mannerisms, the odd behaviors that hadn't been there before. Technically, John had been out of his time even six months ago. Now…now things had only gotten worse, and what Sarah referred to as 'time lag' didn't seem to be improving.

Again, Charley reminded himself that it hadn't been that long, reminded himself of his promise to Sarah. That they'd make John okay, as much as such a thing was possible. "Well," he said, indicating the rapidly brightening sky, "stars are gone for now. You feel like heading back inside?"

John regarded the older man for a long moment, that strange look crossing his features for half a second before he managed to cover it up. "Yeah. Yeah, let's go."

* * *

><p>Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table, pretending that she hadn't been waiting for them. "Hey," she greeted.<p>

Smiling slightly at his mom's effort to appear casual, John claimed the chair across from her. "I'm fine," he said, without anger or annoyance.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." Mentally squaring his shoulders, John sat forward, resting his forearms on the table. "We need names, Mom, documentation."

John's voice was still level, and Sarah fought to keep her defenses from going up. "I know that, John. These things take time."

"That's right. They'll take less time if we start working on them now." A pause, "We should talk to Travis."

At the mention of Sarah's ex, one of the many men she'd slept with to get John prepared for the future, Charley stiffened momentarily. He knew Gant had meant nothing, knew that was the case with all of them. Didn't mean he wanted to think of what Sarah had had to do with them. Resting his back against the counter, he watched mother and son interact, doing his best not to show a reaction.

Sarah blinked at John's words, showing her surprise for a few moments before replacing the mask. "You want me to talk to Travis. There are other people. Cameron-"

"Cameron's contacts are a year…" Shaking his head at the mistake, John rubbed a hand against his forehead, using the gesture to hide his eyes. When the hand dropped and he looked back at his mother, he'd forced himself into steadiness again. "Cameron's contacts are six months old, and if you wanted to use them, you would've done it already. You went to Travis before. You can trust him, Mom. _We _can trust him."

Sarah found Charley's eyes over John's shoulder, silently asking if he'd told the boy about their visit to Gant's ranch. She had the answer before she truly looked for it, and then had it confirmed when she met John's gaze again. "He helped…helps us, in the future?"

The pain rushed up for a moment, before John was able to tamp it down. Still, he had it under control by the time he answered. "He helps us now. We need to go see him."

Sarah was silent for a long handful of seconds. She'd been dragging her feet on the ID's, mostly because she couldn't seem to tear herself away from John, but partly because of Travis. Despite his numerous threats to blow her skull open the last time they met, he _had _done business with her. In fact, he'd snuck in some extra guns, stuff she hadn't paid for. The good stuff too, shotguns, AK-47's. She'd lived with him for a year, and apparently he still remembered what she liked.

She'd been toying with the idea of giving him the truth. Showing it to him, actually, so he'd know once and for all that she wasn't nuts. He had resources, the same ones that brought her to him when John was a kid. And he cared for John, of that she was sure. He cared, and they needed to start building a network, making connections. Setting up the Resistance.

"Okay. We'll go see Travis."

Immediately after announcing her decision, Sarah sought Charley's eyes again. Happy was not a good descriptor for his expression, but he did offer a strained look of understanding. He might not have been pleased, but he wasn't stupid either. He saw the bigger picture, and the bigger picture involved finding whatever allies they could, and doing whatever it took to stop Skynet. Even if that involved enduring more of Travis's remarks about Charley not at all being her type.

Cameron entered through the front door before anything else could be said, crossing the main room in three long strides and joining them in the kitchen.

"Where've you been?" Sarah asked.

"Patrolling the surrounding area," Cameron replied. "Looking for Catherine Weaver."

Charley frowned, not just because he shared Sarah and Ellison's distrust of the liquid metal who'd slithered in here the same night John came back. "I thought you said you wouldn't be able to see her if she didn't want to be seen?"

Tilting her head minutely, Cameron studied Charley as she pulled something from her jacket pocket, holding it up for the others to see. "Sometimes people get lucky. I found a penny."

Half of her wanted to point out that Cameron wasn't a person at all. Instead, Sarah pushed the urge down and smirked, just a little. If they couldn't keep themselves together now, then what hope did they have when it came to building and leading armies? She'd resolved not to let things fall apart again and she meant it. "Lucky you," she drawled. "We'll use it for gas money." Off the questioning cant of Cameron's head. "We're going to take a drive."

* * *

><p>The two hour trek to Gant's place was a study in awkwardness. Sarah and Charley occupied the front of the Jeep, with John sitting as far away from Cameron as he could in the back. He wasn't displaying open hostility towards her as he had after she went bad, but there were other things there. Sarah shot him discrete glances in the rearview mirror, while he stared out the window, with a kind of blank expression that could rival Cameron's. Sarah didn't miss the irony of it, John pacing around the house, much like the metal girl, staring off into nothing, also like Cameron. Except Cameron never <em>was <em>staring off into nothing, Sarah knew enough to realize that. She was thinking, processing, whatever machines did in that department. And John was too, processing whatever he'd been through on the other side of that time bubble. He wasn't shutting her out, but Sarah still wished he'd talk to her more, tell her what he was struggling with. Hell, she'd even take him talking to Cameron, if doing so would actually help. That other irony hadn't escaped her either. John's departure, awful as it was, had brought her and Charley together. He'd left for Cameron's sake, and somehow that leaving had torn him away from her.

Sarah's musings were interrupted as they approached the gated entrance to Gant's property. The men playing guard today weren't the ones from before, when she'd come here with just Charley. Sarah shot him a glance as two armed men approached their vehicle, but couldn't get a read on him. That was a bad sign. Usually, Charley was an open book. She would've preferred him to stay behind with Ellison and Savannah but, like last time, he'd wormed his way into the passenger seat. Touching his forearm, she waited for Charley to look at her, holding his gaze. Last time, Travis had ignited some testosterone fueled part of his brain, and he'd ignored her instructions to stay out of the way. Sarah wouldn't deal with that again, not along with the prospect of what else she had to do. He gave her that same look of forced understanding, and it had to be enough, because Gant's men were tapping at the windows, rifles in hand.

Gaining admission was a hassle. Sarah gave the names on the documents Travis had provided for them, waiting while one of the sentries talked on his cell phone. Travis's enraged screaming wasn't quite as loud as last time, but it was clear that he wasn't happy to see them.

"He doesn't seem happy to see you," Cameron observed as Travis told his guard to tell Sarah to rot in hell.

"We have history."

"You know him. Don't you have history with everyone you know?"

John shifted in his seat, the hint of a smile curving his mouth. "Mom came at him with a butcher knife."

"You saw that?" Sarah asked, tone sharp.

"Kind of hard to miss."

"You were supposed to be sleeping."

"The screaming woke me up."

"Why did you attack him with a butcher's knife?" Cameron asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"It was a sheep skinning knife," Sarah corrected, "and we were breaking up at the time."

"Oh," Cameron replied, apparently satisfied. "Thank you for explaining."

A few months ago, Sarah had lied, used John as a way of getting to Travis. So this time, when she dropped his name, counting on Travis's affection for her son, the response wasn't entirely positive.

"Fuck off you lying, soul sucking, bitch."

After that, John got on the phone himself, keeping eye contact with Cameron in order to keep her from killing the guards, breaking the gate open, and generally ruining their chances at help. "Travis? Hey. It's John."

There was a pause in the yelling, but only a brief one. Gant hadn't seen or heard from John since before Sarah was sent to Pescadero.

Sighing noiselessly, John brushed a hand through short hair. "You remember that time I drank some of your scotch? Mom was gone on that run in Venezuela, and you didn't say anything when she got back?"

Another pause. Then, "Christ. John?"

"Yeah. Hey man. Can we talk, please? It's important?"

Seconds later, they were driving through Travis's gate, while Sarah glared at her son through the rearview mirror. "You were drinking?"

"Mom."

"You were drinking."

"Do we really need to talk about this now?"

Sarah glowered silently until they were parked in front of the house and out of the truck. Travis came striding out from somewhere in back of the building, heading straight to John. Charley and Cameron stood off to the side, one looking uncomfortable, the other mildly curious.

"Jesus kid. How…?" Gant trailed off, rubbing his eyes as if to clear them. "You don't look like you should."

Another small smile pulled at John's lips. "Hell of a greeting, after more than ten years."

Travis shook his head again, still looking John up and down. His eyes took on a different expression, and the confused frown he'd been wearing turned into something else. "What happened to you, John?"

John did his best not to close up at the question, at least not in a too obvious way. "What do you mean?"

Gant's eyes narrowed, but they were still full of concern. "I was a military man for a long time, John. You're carrying something you shouldn't be carrying. What'd you do, join the Army?"

Noting the tense set of John's shoulders, Sarah cut in before her son had a chance to respond. "We need to deal, Travis, and we need to talk."

Gant responded without taking his eyes off John. "What the fuck do you and I need to talk about? Only shit that ever flew out of your mouth was about bombs and robots."

"That's what we need to talk about."

Finally, Travis tore his gaze from John, focusing on his former lover. "You're unbelievable, you know that? I put up with your lunacy because you were a good fuck," he declared, ignoring or disregarding the pained look on John's face and the angry half-sound that came from Charley. "All that fucking bullshit about the end of the world-"

"It's true," Sarah cut in. Her voice was level, a contrast to his.

"It's true," Gant repeated, tone scathing. "What did you say, '97? Was that the year we were all supposed to burn?"

"Yes."

Nodding, Gant made an expansive gesture, waving his hands at their general surroundings. "And yet, here we all are. Sun's still out, birds still sing, and you're still crazier than a fucking-"

"We stopped it." John's voice was calm as he spoke to the man who'd once been his closest thing to a father, but his eyes burned with intensity as he willed Travis to listen. "Or thought we did. We slowed it down, but it's still going to happen if we don't work damn hard to stop it for real this time. We need your help, Travis. _I _need your help."

Sarah's eyes flickered between John and Travis. Her son's expression didn't change, but Gant's eyes had softened in a way she'd rarely seen during their time together. Travis's gaze was glued to John and Sarah almost believed that they had him, that John Connor, the man people trusted enough to die for, was making an appearance. Then Travis gave his reply.

"Oh hell, John." Gant's voice was low and sad as he shook his head, resting a hand on the boy's shoulder. Then the hand was gone, his attention returned to Sarah, and the anger was back. "Are you happy? Are you fucking pleased with yourself? Christ. Thought John was lucky enough to get away from you before you fucked with his head even more, but apparently-"

"Hey, that's enough," Charley began, stepping towards the group of three.

"Charley," Sarah said. The one word, the warning behind it, was enough to freeze him in place. She'd always loved his concern, his attempts to take care of her, even as she resented the hell out of them. At this moment, she was more in touch with the resentment feeling. She didn't need his protection, not when it came to Travis.

Sensing that the tension was reaching critical mass, John nodded towards Cameron. "Tell him who you are."

It didn't escape Sarah's notice that despite John's hot and cold reactions to the machine, he'd said 'who' instead of 'what.' She didn't have time to dwell on this though, because Gant was suddenly moving away from her and towards Cameron.

Having ignored her completely before, Gant was now pacing around the metal like a vulture, eyes taking in every detail. He was on his third circuit, gaze glued to her ass, before he finally spoke. "Hey cutie, what's your name?"

Cameron's reply was given to Sarah rather than the ex-Green Beret. "You had intercourse with this man?"

Coming around to stand in front of her, Gant answered before Sarah had the chance. "Hell yes. Many, many times."

"You," Sarah said, nodding at Cameron, "it was for the mission. And you," she continued, addressing Travis and ignoring the looks on Charley and John's faces, "it wasn't that many times."

"Hell if it wasn't," Gant argued. "Sometimes it was multiple times a night."

"Maybe it was. Maybe the boredom caused me to forget."

"Guys." John made an attempt at getting things back on track, even as his stomach rolled at the direction the conversation had taken. Yet in another way, it was almost comforting, seeing his mother and Travis at each other's throats. Reminded him of childhood.

"You're a bitch, you know that? Grade A, fucking whackjob bitch." Briefly, Gant's eyes cut to Charley. "And look, Mr. Not Your Type is still here. Guess that means you're still fucking him."

It was Cameron who answered, even though there hadn't really been a question. "Yes, she's still fucking him. Sometimes multiple times a night. I don't sleep," she continued, off the incredulous and heated looks coming her way. "I hear things."

"Enough," John stated, a definite edge to his voice. It seemed like they'd been here for hours, and all they'd accomplished was causing further damage to his already frayed psyche. "Cameron," he said, repeating an earlier request, "tell him who you are."

Cameron complied, addressing Gant with her usual lack of expression. "I'm a terminator, sent back from the year 2027 by John Connor. My primary objective is to protect John Connor and aid in the prevention of Judgment Day."

That earned her a snort and a derisive grin. "Terminator. Of course. Always with the goddamn terminators." To Sarah, "I suppose she's the one we talked about last time, the one you were fucking."

Rolling her eyes, Sarah addressed the group at large, Charley being the only one who would know what Gant was speaking of. "Don't ask." To Travis, "Yes, she's the one we talked about last time."

"I see. And where _was _she last time?"

"I was out of town," Cameron replied, answering for herself.

"You were out of town," Gant repeated. "And you were sent back by John."

"Yes."

"From the year 2027."

"Yes."

"Sent back by John," said Travis, gesturing toward the boy in question, "to protect John."

"Yes."

"Well. That makes perfect sense."

"Yes. It does."

At her wit's end, Sarah nodded towards the .45 that nearly always stayed holstered at Gant's waist. She herself was feeling edgy, having surrendered her weapon to Travis's guards before entering the compound. "Give me your gun."

"Fuck off."

"I need to show you something."

"Fuck off. I've seen everything you have to offer and let me tell you, its not-"

"Travis."

It was John that spoke. No one there had ever heard that particular tone from him. Gant's eyes locked on John's again. Sarah watched the wheels turn in his head, watched his forehead crease and his lips turn down. Then, with a shake of the head and a muttered curse, Gant handed over his firearm. "You fucking try anything on me Sarah, I swear to God-"

"Believe me Travis, I'm not trying anything on you. Ever again," Sarah replied, gesturing for the others to back away, with the exception of Gant. She also indicated that Cameron should remain apart from the group.

"What the hell are you driving at, Connor?" Gant asked. He'd wound up positioned next to Charley. Both men were too busy ignoring each other to notice the odd way that John watched them from the corner of his eye.

Not bothering with a response for Travis, Sarah stood back from Cameron, the others behind her. Raising the gun just slightly, Sarah raised an eyebrow as well. "Can I shoot you in the head with this?" She considered it a sign of self-improvement that she'd thought to ask first.

"If it will help," Cameron replied.

"Turn around."

Gant's eyes widened. For the first time since seeing John, he looked nonplussed. "Bullshit, Sarah."

"Just watch," Sarah retorted, taking aim at the back of Cameron's skull before clicking off the safety.

"Christ Connor," Gant began, moving as if to take the gun from her.

He never had a chance. Sarah fired three rounds directly into the metal cranium, Cameron's head jerking minutely with each hit. Charley winced, a muscle in John's jaw twitched, Sarah showed no reaction, and Gant lost every bit of color in his face.

Cameron remained perfectly still as Gant approached her, his mouth slightly open. He looked at her hard, going so far as to pinch the skin of her cheek. Cameron allowed this, but even Charley, not the best when it came to reading the cyborg, saw a flash of annoyance cross her features. After confirming the existence of what seemed to be real flesh, Travis circled around her as he had before, his movements much slower this time

Sarah watched him as he studied the bullets, moving closer. Impossibly, she watched his normally tan skin grow even whiter, watched the truth crash in on him. A vein had suddenly become very prominent in the middle of his forehead, and a tremor went up his spine as she reached his side. Clicking the safety back in place, Sarah passed him the gun. Travis took it, replacing it in its holster without taking his eyes off Cameron, without seeming to realize what he was doing at all.

"You all right?" Sarah asked, concerned in spite of herself. Compared to some o the others she'd been forced to take up with, Travis was a saint. And he'd always, always been good to John. "Travis?"

Sarah touched his arm for half a second. It was barely a touch at all, there and gone in less than a blink. The ex-military man jumped as if she'd put a livewire to his skin. He recovered quickly though, eyes meeting hers. There was no anger in his gaze. For the first time since before she'd left, there was no anger, no resentment, just harsh, painful understanding. "It was true. It _is _true."

"It's true," Sarah confirmed.

"All that shit you used to spout off, it was all…?"

"Yes. You okay?"

Travis blinked slowly, as if he was having trouble processing the question. "I…yeah. Yeah. I…I just….I think I'm having a small stroke…"

Immediately, Cameron turned so she was facing the other two. "Do you require medical attention?"

Gant jerked again, backing off several paces and almost tripping in the process. Watching this, Charley couldn't help feeling sympathy for the man. He remembered this moment well, the moment when the world spun on its axis and became something unrecognizable.

"You need a minute?" Sarah asked, hoping like hell that Gant wasn't about to pass out on her.

Blinking again, Travis seemed to come back to himself, at least enough to refocus on his ex. "A what?"

"A minute. You need a minute?"

Gant snorted again, a half-crazed grin twisting his lips. "Fuck that," he retorted, shock and disbelief coloring his tone. "I need a fucking drink. I need…lots of fucking…drinks…"

Gant's eyes returned to Cameron. When it became clear that he wasn't going to finish the sentence, John stepped forward, carefully modulating his tone. "Can we talk, Travis? Can we go inside and talk about things?"

Nodding in a dazed sort of way, Gant gestured towards the house and began walking. "Tequila, he muttered. "I need some goddamn tequila."

Charley had moved closer as well, and he fell into step beside Gant, wanting to be close at hand if the man really _was _having a stroke. Sarah was on Gant's other side, with John and Cameron taking up the rear.

"Are you all right?" Cameron asked, watching John as he watched the others.

"Fine," John replied. It wasn't an angry response or a brush-off. He wasn't angry at Cameron, at least not then. He was focused on the strange sight of the three adults walking together. Mostly though, he was looking at Gant and Charley, as he'd done before. It didn't take much to send him back in time. Or forward, technically. As he had so many times since returning home, John had disappeared again, unwillingly revisited the future he'd spent a year trying to escape from.

_John wasn't sure what he'd said to them. After Derek and Kyle and the girl who wasn't Cameron, it was all a blur of explanations that he himself couldn't make sense of. They put him in a tiny room for a bit, fired off question after question. They let him keep Kyle's jacket though, and it was Kyle who now led him through the maze of darkened corridors._

_John tried not to sneak glances at his father, failing miserably. He saw parts of himself there, and he sucked in every detail, his mother's stories of Reese the hero playing on a loop in his mind. Derek had been shocking enough but Kyle…_

_Before he could work himself into a nervous breakdown, Kyle had rounded a corner, stopping in front of a door flanked by a lone soldier. Reese spoke a few words to the man, and something he said lit up in John's mind, but it was just a flicker, and Reese was ushering him through the door now, and Reese was taking up most of his brainpower._

_The room was small, with a battered desk and chair in the middle of it. There were guns on a nearby table, lots of them. Mossbergs. His mother had always favored the Mossberg. Crude maps hung all over the walls, lists of names and places. John tried to take it all in, tried processing the fact that his dead father was standing next to him. And then the door opened, and two became three, and John's world turned over again._

_It was Charley. There was gray in his hair and indescribable weariness in his face, but it was Charley. Kyle said something as he approached, spoke in a deferential way, but John barely heard the words. He hadn't seen this man since the day Michelle died that horrible, pointless death. John raked his gaze over Charley, noting the same dirty, tattered clothes that everyone seemed to wear now. Something stood out though, something different. There was a chain around Charley's neck, gold, with two gold rings hanging from it. John's eyes left the necklace, moved up to meet Charley's disbelieving gaze, then flicked back to Kyle. His father and the man who'd loved him like a father, impossibly, together._

_The look on Charley's face was not entirely unfamiliar. John remembered it from just after they jumped ahead, when he'd been caught breaking into the Dixon home. Slowly, the man approached, while Kyle backed off slightly._

"_John?" he asked, resting both hands on the boy's shoulders. "I…I was starting to think you weren't…"_

_John wanted to speak, but couldn't. There were a million questions, a ,million things that needed saying, and all he could do was swallow hard, blink harder, and do his best to keep some semblance of control._

"_We've….I've been waiting for you, Johnny. We have a lot to talk about."_


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **Yeah, I know. I'm slow, real life is distracting, apologies. It's a long update, so hopefully that'll help make up for the inhumanly long wait. And because of that inhumanly long wait, you may want to skim over John's flashback (flashforward?) sequence from last time.

A couple of quick things before we get into it here. Despite a certain scene buried within these pages, this fic will not magically transform into a Jameron piece, for all the reasons outlined in my chapter 2 AN. Don't ask, it's not happening, again, for all the reasons outlined in my second chapter AN. I'd like to thank Wheresmyluce for playing sounding board and somehow deciphering my rambling, incoherent nonsense. I'd also like to thank CheekeyMonkey. Because of the lightsaber. Yup, the lightsaber makes her the single greatest cheekey or monkey to ever fic up the planet.

The usual stuff applies. I'm my own editor, there's going to be errors, if you see anything too grievous, do let me know. Either way, I thank you for your patience while shamelessly begging that you leave some feedback on your way out. To quote two of my favorite stalkers in the same sentence, take it easy, and I'll catch you on the flipside.

* * *

><p>Travis remained in a daze as he led the group into a spacious, well-appointed kitchen. A table and chairs stood nearby, but Gant ignored them. Instead of offering a place to sit, he began rummaging through his cabinets, softly muttering to himself.<p>

"Booze…booze. Where's the fucking…? I told her not to fuck with…I have a system here."

After he'd opened and reclosed the liquor cabinet three times, Sarah took pity on him, carefully shouldering him out of the way so she could reach the bottles that were staring him in the face.

"I have a system," he repeated, looking utterly lost as his ex began sifting through his drink supply.

"I know you do, Travis." Glancing over her shoulder, Sarah locked eyes with Cameron, brows raised in a silent question. Wordlessly, the cyborg crossed the room and started pulling down glasses that Travis had seen and ignored at least twice.

Gant stared wildly around the room until his gaze landed on the refrigerator. Seconds later, his feet had followed the path of his eyes. "Who's hungry?" he asked, throwing the fridge door open in a rough, jerky motion.

"I'm not," Cameron replied, passing him as she brought the glasses from cabinet to table.

Travis stiffened at the sound of her voice, but didn't turn away from his perusal of the fridge's contents. "We've got leftover soup. You want leftover soup?"

Noting how close the man was to mental collapse, John kept his voice carefully measured as he eyed the ex-soldier. "Sure Travis. What kind?"

Travis stared into the fridge, stared at John, stared back into the fridge. After a few moments, he blinked hard and shook his head, still examining the contents of his refrigerator. "Nah, you don't want any soup. Olga made it. Fucking Russian Commie food, shit's disgusting."

"Why is it disgusting?" Cameron asked, seemingly intent on making conversation with Gant while he had his nervous breakdown.

Travis didn't tense up this time, but he didn't turn away from the fridge either. "It's cold. Cold soup. Really, what's the fucking point? Fish, turnips, rutabagas. Every disgusting thing in the world, dumped into a bowl. Looks like green puke." Finally closing the fridge door, Gant looked at Sarah as she passed, loaded down with bottles. "What's that shit called, Sarah, starts with an 'o'?"

"I have no idea," Sarah replied, cursing silently, but offering Charley the hint of a smile as he took the bottles from her. Charley had taken the truths of Skynet and possible global destruction far better than Gant was.

"Okroshka," said Cameron as she set down glasses for three people. She had no interest in alcohol, and judging by Sarah's reaction to the news of John's childhood drinking experiment, Cameron doubted that the woman would want her son consuming it, future leader of mankind or not.

"What?" Gant asked, sounding almost detached from his surroundings.

"Okroshka," Cameron repeated. "The soup you described, starts with an 'o.' Okroska."'

"Oh yeah. That stuff. Starts with an…"

Gant trailed off again, standing still as a statue in the middle of his kitchen. At her wit's end, Sarah gestured for the others to take seats while she crossed back to stand in front of her ex. "Travis."

"Sarah."

"You okay?"

Gant shrugged, eyes only partially focused as he met her gaze. "I'm okay. I'm…I think I'm losing my mind though."

"You're not. Come sit down."

"I think I am."

"Fine," Sarah replied, "Do it later." Showing with her eyes that he'd better move and move quickly, Sarah went back to the table, pulling out one of the vacant chairs."Sit down, Travis."

Gant followed, without taking the chair. His eyes narrowed and some of the anger came back. "Quit ordering me around, Connor, I fucking hate that. You know how fucking embarrassing it was when you pulled that shit in front of the guys when we were on runs? I swear to God-"

"Sit _down_, Travis," Sarah ordered, silently cheering over the return of some of Gant's usual disdain.

Travis sat down. The vein in his forehead was visible again, and his fingers drummed restlessly against the table. "So," he began, eyes shifting between all of them, but lingering especially long on Cameron. "Robots."

"Cyborgs."

One response given simultaneously by three humans and one cyborg. Sitting between John and Charley, Sarah glanced at both of them briefly before locking eyes with Cameron. The machine hovered near the table, having chosen not to sit.

Gant meanwhile was looking at them with a different sort of strangeness in his eyes. "Well jeez, you don't need to get all snippy about it. Act like I'm supposed to fucking know these things."

"Now you know," Cameron replied. "I'm a cybernetic organism, not a robot."

"And…there's a difference?"

"There are many differences," Cameron began, only to be interrupted by Sarah.

"Let's save the technicalities for later," she said, already feeling like they'd been here for hours and accomplished nothing. "Look Travis-"

"Wait," said Gant, reaching over and dragging a bottle of tequila across the table. "Just…I need to…" He fought with the cap for several moments, hands twitching minutely as he went back to muttering mostly to himself. "Robots. Everything was fine an hour ago, and now robots."

"Cyborgs," Cameron corrected.

Gant managed to open the bottle, then proceeded to spill a good portion of it all over the table as he attempted to get the booze into his glass. Pity combined with impatience forced Sarah to action. Taking hold of bottle and glass, Sarah poured Gant a healthy dose of tequila before pushing his drink across the table and repeating the process for herself.

"Cyborgs," Gant mumbled, looking at Cameron as he spoke. "Fucking cyborgs," he said, rubbing at his temples. "I've got to quit drinking." With those words, he downed the alcohol Sarah had given him in one long gulp.

"Travis," John began, "I know this is a lot to take in-"

That was as far as he got before the sound of children yelling filtered down through the ceiling. That noise mixed with the sound of small feet pounding over stairs, heralding the arrival of Travis's children. The son entered first, the boy Sarah and Charley had glimpsed briefly during their last visit. A couple of years younger than Savannah, TJ Gant resembled his namesake, same hair color, same eyes, same complexion. The younger Gant came barreling into the kitchen clutching a doll in his hand. Without sparing a glance for the others, he crashed into Travis's legs, latching on for dear life.

"Daddy! Anna took my Transformers!"

Following that declaration, a blonde girl closer to Savannah's age ran in as well, a toy robot in her hand. "Only because _he _took my Barbie. Make him give it back!"

"I don't _want _your stupid girly doll, I only took it because _you _took my Megatron!"

"Why would I want this stupid thing?" the girl asked, staring distastefully at the action figure while keeping it out of her brother's reach. "I took your dumb toy because _you _took my Barbie. _You _started it!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did-"

"Guys!" Travis said loudly, the vein in his forehead prominent once again. "Guys," he repeated, tone somewhat back to normal. "Daddy's in the middle of something right now, can you go to your mother with this one?"

"We did," the girl replied indignantly. "Mommy said to ask you."

"Of course she did," Gant muttered "Three years in this country she knows what, maybe three phrases by heart. 'Tell your father,' has to be the first one she figured out." Shaking his head, Gant glanced at the others, met Cameron's eyes again, quickly looked away. Before either child could protest, he'd snatched up both toys, handing the doll back to his daughter. The Megatron, he held on to, eyes darting back and forth between the plastic robot in his hand and the living cyborg standing in his kitchen.

"Daddy," TJ whined, looking expectantly up at his namesake.

Travis blinked several times, shaking his head without relinquishing the toy. "Everyone," he said, the slightly dazed quality back in his voice. "In case you couldn't tell from the screaming, these are my kids. TJ and…TJ and…." Snapping his fingers repeatedly, Gant stared at his daughter without truly seeing her.

"Anna," Charley supplied, offering the girl a smile that probably wouldn't ease the sting of having her father forget her name.

"That," Gant replied, nodding an acknowledgement in to Charley. "Yeah. Olga picked it out. It was her mom's name. Or her grandmother's. Could've been an aunt."

"Should I slap him?" Cameron asked.

"What?" Sarah asked. "No."

"He's in shock, he's behaving irrationally. Slapping him might help."

"You're not slapping him," said John, voice firm.

"I'm not behaving irrationally," Travis stated, just as his wife entered the room. Olga was an older version of her daughter, but not much older. With the proper amount of squinting and imagination, Olga might've passed for being slightly beyond Cameron's purported age. The blonde's eyes narrowed as she looked at Sarah and Cameron, barely paused over John, then brightened as she spotted Charley.

If Gant noticed his wife's preoccupation, he didn't show it. Instead, he passed the child's toy over to her, looking relieved when it was out of his hand. "Olga honey, throw this out. And the other ones like it."

"Daddy!" TJ yelled, hitting his father's knee with tiny fists.

"Ha ha," his sister taunted. "That's what you get for playing with my Barbies."

"I _wasn't _playing with your stupid, dumb, girly Barbies!"

"Anna, leave your brother alone. TJ, I really hope you _weren't _playing with those things, but better them then _that_ thing," he said, gesturing at the plastic figure being held by a confused Olga.

"But Daddy-"

"I can't have robots in my house, TJ. I'll buy you a train set or something." With that, moments after defending his rationality, Gant ordered his wife to burn all his son's robot figures, rather than simply tossing them. This led to Travis Jr. running off in a huff while his sister improved the situation by laughing and pointing. Exasperated, Gant turned attention to his wife, a pleading note entering his voice. "Honey…a little help?"

Olga didn't respond to that. Still holding her son's action figure, her eyes kept cutting between Sarah, whom her husband had introduced as 'the old Mrs. Gant' the last time they met, and Charley, whom she'd taken a rather instantaneous liking to, despite her almost complete inability to communicate with him. Even as she scowled at the other woman, Sarah couldn't claim surprise. Charley was hardly unattractive, and a year of living with Travis had shown her how inattentive he could be. That combined with what she was seeing here told Sarah that Gant's wife was closer to domestic slave than life partner.

Meanwhile, Gant's daughter seemed to have taken an interest in Cameron. She'd left her father's side to approach the metal girl, appraising her critically for a long moment. "I like your jacket," she finally announced.

Cameron looked down briefly, examining her coveted purple leather jacket. "Thank you," she responded, eyes returning to the child. "It's tight."

"Yeah. Want to play Barbies?" the girl asked, holding up her doll in invitation.

Following this, a series of exchanges took place, faster than Sarah could process them. Somehow, Cameron wound up having a play-date with Travis's daughter. This wouldn't have been possible if her hair wasn't covering the bullets Sarah had fired into the back of her skull. Anna, then entreated her mother to join them, which led to a long string of indiscernible Russian from Olga, and a lot of rapid finger pointing between herself and Charley. At some point during all this, Travis Jr. returned from wherever he'd been sulking. Obviously he hadn't gone far, because he knew of his sister's plans for Cameron. Apparently deciding that if Anna had befriended a total stranger he should too, TJ essentially begged Charley to join him in the other room and examine the action figures his 'mean, stupid Daddy,' meant to destroy.

And so it was that Sarah and John told the elder Gant about the possible destruction of mankind while his children played loudly in the next room. Fortunately for Sarah's peace of mind, the young Mrs. Gant soon became more interested in Cameron than Charley, after discovering the cyborg's language skills. Sarah half-listened to Olga and Cameron converse in Russian, wondering how long it'd been since Olga engaged in a conversation she completely understood. For their part, the children were entertaining themselves and Charley with a scenario involving one of Anna's dolls falling in love with one of TJ's robots, their earlier quarrel forgotten in the excitement of having new people to spend time with. Listening to a narrative about a human developing feelings for a machine struck Sarah as unpleasantly ironic, even as she refreshed Travis's memory on what she'd told him years ago, adding new information and accepting John's frequent assists.

By the time they were through, Gant had indulged in a few more shots of tequila, though he wasn't drunk. The minor breakdown of earlier seemed to have run its course, leaving Travis in a state of numb resignation.

"It was true," he said in a low, hollow voice. "Everything you ever told me was true," he stated, repeating earlier sentiments.

"Yes," Sarah replied.

Sitting back in his chair, Gant pressed knuckles to forehead as he'd done before, inhaling a deep, shaky breath. After a few moments, he sat forward again, resting his hands on the table, regarding the Connors with clear, determined eyes. "What do you need?"

Sarah answered him, detailing the immediate problem of identification for John and Cameron. John himself followed up with the more long-term goals, their eventual need for Gant's network of people, weapons, and other resources. Gant agreed to all of it without a blink, going so far as to invite them to invade his gun supply.

Gant's eyes rarely left Sarah during this exchange, cluing John in to part of the older man's motivations. After exchanging a quick nod with his mother, John rose from the table, raising a questioning eyebrow at his one-time father figure. "Anyplace I shouldn't go?"

Gant blinked in surprise, breaking his attention from Sarah long enough to wave dismissively at her son. "No, no John. You know where everything is. Anything I got is yours."

John couldn't help a small smile as he left Travis and his mother to hash things out, because he'd known that, too.

* * *

><p>The kids were still vying for Charley's attention and Olga was still talking away to the girl she didn't know was a cyborg as Gant and Sarah sat alone at the table. It was Travis who spoke first, looking into the bottom of his half-filled glass rather than at his ex. "No wonder you were always serious as a fucking heart attack. I'd have a stick up my ass to if I had to carry around all that shit on my own."<p>

"I'm glad you understand," Sarah retorted, a hint of venom entering her voice. Then, because Gant looked at her with genuine remorse, because she knew what he meant, Sarah softened her tone. "I tried to tell you."

"You did," Gant acknowledged, voice softer than usual. "Many times. I thought you were a whackjob."

"You mentioned that. Many times."

"Sorry."

Shaking her head, Sarah took a sip of her own drink. "Common mistake. You didn't exactly throw us out."

Releasing a derisive half-chuckle, Gant raised his own glass. "You kidding? In this business, I start cutting people off just because they're crazy, I'd lose all my friends. You remember Willie what's-his-name, thought aliens were coming into his house at night and attaching electrodes to his balls?"

Thinking the small talk might be Travis's way of keeping himself from going as crazy as Willie what's-his-name, and recalling her own shock after learning the truth from Kyle, Sarah chose to go along with it. "One of your best customers."

"Damn straight. Or Mitch? Short guy with that thing on his face, thought flu shots were the government's way of implanting us with tracking devices."

"I remember. You still deal to him?"

"He's been dead since before you blew yourself up. Didn't blow yourself up."

"Time jumped."

"That," Gant agreed, draining the contents of his glass. "I'm still…I'm still working on that."

"I know. What about Willie?" Sarah asked, determined to keep Gant from descending back into hysteria. "He still around?"

"Depends what you mean by 'around.' Hear he pissed off the wrong people, got dumped in the desert not far from here. Also before you…time jumped." There was a moment of heavy silence. Then, "You never cared at all did you? About me. You and I, all of it, it was all so you could get John ready."

'Travis…"

"You took me for a ride, got what you needed, then you took off and never looked back."

"I did what I needed to do."

"For John."

"It's all for John," she replied. "John, and everyone else."

"Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it is. Next to all that…"

Sarah saw the hurt in his face, saw how he'd thought they'd had something, even after all these years, even though it ended badly. "I'm sorry, Travis," she said, surprised by how much she meant it.

Releasing another deep breath, Gant looked away from her, eyeing his children in the next room, still much too loud and much too excited to care about whatever discussion the adults were having. "You know what's fucked up about this?" he asked, eyes moving to the cyborg currently sharing a couch with his wife. "I mean, besides the future apocalypse thing, which is very, very fucked up?"

"What?"

Travis shot her a quick glance before eyeing his children again. "You did exactly the right thing. Exactly."

Tracking Gant's eye line, Sarah watched Charley interact with the other man's kids, watched the joy it brought to everyone involved. Sparing another glance at the woman who'd replaced her in Travis's life, Sarah reflected on this bizarre domesticity Gant had carved out for himself. She knew he was right, she'd done what she needed to do, both then and now. And still there was the guilt of burdening him with this, burdening his family. The fact that she'd been right to leave him in the first place, that returning now was a necessity, those truths couldn't absolve her of the guilt, not completely.

Observing Cameron with the current Mrs. Gant brought unwanted thoughts of the former Mrs. Dixon. Those were never far from the surface, and watching Charley with the kids brought them up full force. She'd left him, too, and she'd destroyed his chances of a scene like this. His wife was dead, and thanks to complications from John's birth, so was any chance of Sarah ever giving him the children he'd always wanted. Not that she could've done that anyway, her life being what it was. _Their _life, she corrected herself. She thought she'd come to terms with it already, the fact that Charley forgave her, that he wanted in on the madness that'd been her existence for so long.

She must've been staring too long, because suddenly Charley's eyes were on hers, even as the kids continued to laugh and play and prod him for more entertainment. It was a short moment, as most of them were. There were always more pressing concerns, always things to do. But it was long enough to keep Sarah from drowning in old guilt. Then TJ was pulling at Charley's arm, and his father was pulling Sarah's glass away from her, and they were back to more immediate problems.

"Robots," Gant mused, topping off Sarah's glass and pushing it back across the table. "Anna's got this movie, _Wall-E, _has this little robot. I should throw it out, shouldn't I?"

Sighing quietly, Sarah again tamped down on her regret, on the fact that she'd been required to shatter his ignorance, deliver Reese's doomsday message to ears that could no longer deny the truth. "You all right?" she asked, for what felt like the hundredth time.

As she had with Charley moments earlier, Sarah met Travis's gaze. She watched his face, watched the slow, painful acceptance take over his features. Acceptance of the future, of the past, of _their _past. It was a difficult forgiveness, but it was there, Sarah recognized the look. She'd seen a similar expression on Charley's face before. And then Travis was grinning, a crazy, kamikaze smile she remembered from some of the more dangerous gun runs.

"To the future!" he proclaimed, louder than normal, but not loud enough to penetrate the din in the next room. Raising his glass at the same time he raised his eyebrows, Travis continued to grin as he asked a silent question.

Without her permission, Sarah's mouth curved into a half-smile as she took hold of her own drink. "To the future."

"Fuck it if it can't take a joke," Gant added, clinking glasses with her before knocking back another shot.

Sarah downed her own drink before speaking again. "There's something else I need from you."

* * *

><p>John found Travis's gun cache without difficulty. The main one anyway, the stash his mother had pilfered from before they headed for the hills. There were smaller ones spread throughout the house and property, but the office was where Travis kept all his best stuff.<p>

As John picked his way through a usually-hidden gun rack, he glanced over at Travis's desk and the items surrounding it. He'd been a kid the last time he left this room. Now the walls were adorned with the artwork of Travis's children. It was strange being back here, but good in its own way. Travis had taught him a lot in this room, most of the information related to guns and girls. More often than not, there'd been a drink nearby when Gant imparted his wisdom. The bottle of Jack Daniels at the corner of the desk made John smile a little. Some things didn't change. There were also a couple of tiny toy cars lying near the booze, signaling that TJ had been here recently. Some things _did_ change.

"Olga finally talk herself out?" John asked, without taking his eyes from the shotgun he was examining. She'd been able to sneak up on him before, there were plenty of times that she still could. But John's level of awareness had increased since the time jump. Awareness of her, awareness of a lot of things.

Cameron was next to him in three long strides, taking hold of an AK-47. "Olga is preparing lunch. She gave me a blini recipe."

"A what?" John asked, frowning in confusion as he looked at the cyborg.

"Blini," Cameron repeated. "Thin pancakes. They're a Russian cusine."

John couldn't stop the chuckle from escaping. "You really think mom's going to use somebody else's pancake recipe?" Especially when it came from someone who'd spent the first portion of their visit ogling Charley.

Cameron nodded after a second's thought, apparently agreeing with him. For a moment, there was no noise except the clicking of gun chambers. John set the gun aside, picked up another rifle and refocused on his task. Then Cameron spoke again.

"Why did your mother choose Charley Dixon over Travis Gant?"

"What?" John asked all his attention once again on Cameron.

"Gant is an asset to the mission. He has ways of helping us."

"Which pretty much sums up why we're here right now."

"But your mother left him."

John sighed at the note of confusion in her voice, at the direction this conversation had taken. "Because she'd learned all she could from him. He wasn't…he wasn't useful to her anymore."

"That part I understand," Cameron replied. "But why did she eventually choose Charley? He doesn't have the skills that Gant has. Given the choice, it would've made more sense for her to stay with him."

"Charley did help us," John countered, trying to keep his frustration in check. "He saved Derek's life."

"Derek betrayed you. He put you in danger. He was a liability to the mission."

John closed his eyes and took a breath. "Not everything is about the mission."

"Yes it is," Cameron argued. "That's what your mother says. But she still chose Charley Dixon. She's made questionable decisions because of him."

Something clicked in John's head, a memory from when he first came back. Cameron and his mother had seemed to be getting on surprisingly well, then suddenly everything had gone back to normal, with his mom angry at the cyborg. Granted, it didn't take much to piss off Sarah Connor, particularly where Cameron was concerned, but John had a hunch that the time in the warehouse had been special. "Did you talk to mom about this, the night we jumped again?"

"Yes. She wasn't happy. She doesn't like it when I question her about Charley Dixon."

John's lips twisted into a wry half-smile. His mother disliked being questioned on _anything_, especially by Cameron. But Charley was a special case. "She loves him. You can't treat him like he's just another chess piece, just another part of the mission."

"But that's how your mother treated Travis Gant."

Sighing, John turned to face her more fully. He couldn't be angry, because what his mom had probably read as a threat was nothing more than Cameron's curiosity, her yearning to know. There was still so much that was beyond her programming, beyond her ability to comprehend. "She didn't love Travis. She loves Charley. It's different when you love someone."

"Why?"

"Why does she love him, or why is it different when you're in love?"

There was a moment's pause before Cameron's reply. "Why does she love him? They have many differences, it doesn't seem logical for them to be together."

This was getting harder with each passing second. "It's not about logic. You don't choose it, you can't. It just happens. And when it does…you want to keep that person. You realize you'd do anything for them, whether it's logical or not."

"People do crazy things when they're in love," Cameron replied, obviously quoting from some file in her CPU.

"Yeah," John replied, knowing that Cameron would at least recognize the strain in his voice.

Turning back to the weapons in front of him, John tried not to watch Cameron from the corner of his eye when she mimicked his actions. When they first came back he'd been angry, raw from all the losses, too devastated to think straight. He'd been confused about his feelings towards Cameron, as he still was. But enough time had passed for him to gain some small measure of perspective. He'd loved her when he left his mom standing in that basement. His anger at Cameron for not understanding what he did, for questioning his judgment the first time he saw her again, the anger made him want to deny the plain, honest truth. He'd risked everything for her, because he'd loved her.

He hadn't answered Charley when the older man asked if he was in love now. If asked again, he still doubted his ability to produce a response. The feelings were still there, that hadn't changed. Everything else though… The hole in Cameron's memory banks essentially made her the same as she'd been before, regardless of what she may've experienced after jumping ahead. John, he was a different person, a person still healing from the wounds of the last year. Sometimes he barely knew himself anymore. Except for the fact that he was John Connor, and he had a destiny, one he seemed unable to escape. And until he figured out more than that…

"_Do you love me, John?"_

The words came out of nowhere, heard only within his own mind. He'd made the mistake of looking at Cameron for a split second, and he thought he'd seen something in her expression. Whether it'd been there, or whether he'd been reliving a conversation with Allison…

He _hadn't _loved her. But he _could _have, and that was the hell of it. If he hadn't seen Cameron every time he looked at her… Without wanting to, he looked at Cameron again, still thinking he saw that flicker of something in her face. He half expected her to say what Allison had that night they were in the tunnels together, restocking the weapons cache, after months and months of growing closer.

But Cameron didn't ask whether or not he loved her. "I'm sorry," she said instead.

John swallowed hard, looking at the rifle in his hand to keep from seeing her. "Why? What are you sorry for?"

"Your losses."

John swallowed again. He didn't know why this was being said now, didn't think it mattered. Part of him, the childish, angry part that'd caused so many problems, wanted to snap, tell her that she wasn't sorry, that she couldn't feel that emotion. But John couldn't say that, not with any level of certainty. Cameron had said before that he didn't understand how the machines worked, how _she _worked. He still didn't, not anywhere close to fully, but he thought he had a better idea now, thought he heard and saw things that anger and immaturity had blinded him to before. Maybe once he was sure, once he'd dealt with his feelings for Allison, maybe then he could figure out where he stood with Cameron. But until then, until he'd fixed himself first…

"Thank you," he said in response to her apology. Because there was nothing else to say, not yet.

Another silence, again broken by Cameron. "So loving someone means needing them."

"That's part of it, yes," John replied, unable to keep the weariness from his tone.

"And your mother needs Charley Dixon."

John blinked. For a moment, he'd forgotten what started all this to begin with. "Yes," he confirmed, trying to explain in a way that would make sense to Cameron, end this discussion, and hopefully end the tension surrounding the Charley issue. "There are more important things than weapons, resources. He helps her in ways Travis can't."

"What ways?" Cameron asked, tilting her head slightly.

"He's…there. He trusts her in a way Travis never did. He makes her happy. Keeps her balanced."

"Balanced?"

"Sane," John elaborated. Then he realized what he'd said, and the healthy fear of his mother kicked in. "Don't tell mom I said that." His mother's mental health was a dangerous topic, _very _dangerous.

Cameron nodded agreement, half-turning to look over her shoulder. "Don't tell Sarah what John said."

Surprised John turned to see Charley standing in the doorway. How he'd heard Cameron's approach but not Charley's… The cyborg distracted him, she always had. "How long were you…?"

"Not long," Charley replied, mouth curved in the hint of a smile. "Your mom sent me to find you. We need to go over some things about the ID's."

Charley headed down the hall without waiting for a response, Cameron close behind. She paused long enough to add a sniper rifle to the collection they planned to take with them. She also stopped in front of Gant's trashcan, removing a piece of paper from her jacket pocket and throwing it inside. Squinting, John recognized it as the Russian pancake recipe they'd never get to use. With that gone, Cameron surveyed the room one more time before moving towards the door.

"Travis Gant should have a recycle bin in here. It's better for the environment. Are you coming?"

After promising to be there momentarily, John watched her leave, crossing the spot where Charley had stood, brow furrowed in confusion. It seemed impossible for Cameron not to have noticed his presence. Had she asked about Charley without caring that he was there to hear it? John wouldn't have put it past her, but somehow… There'd been a kind of peace in Charley's expression, something John wouldn't have expected if the older man had heard all of their conversation. And Cameron _had _been rather abrupt in her shift from talking about Charley, then John himself, then Charley again, even by her standards.

Without knowing how it got there, an idea began forming in John's mind. Charley was jealous of Gant, in some way or another. This was obvious, probably even to Cameron, not known for her insight into human interaction. They'd be working with Gant again, of that John was certain. If Cameron was too, if she'd tried helping in her own strange way… But she couldn't have known what he would say…

Unless she had. Unless she'd had a similar discussion with Future-John. She did have a tendency to get tripped up by the same things when it came to human behavior. Even if Future-John had attempted to explain the complexities of love before, that hardly meant she'd be guaranteed to understand them, to not ask again. They might not have been speaking of Charley and his mom in particular, but if Cameron had talked to Future-John about this before, she would've had a fairly good idea of what the John of today would say.

Shaking his head, John decided that short of asking directly, there'd be no way to know for sure. And if Charley was reassured, then it hardly mattered one way or the other. Rubbing a hand across his forehead, John studied the gun he was still holding. A Mossberg. One of his mother's favorites. John looked at the weapon, looked at the rack it'd come from, over at the doorframe Charley had stood inside. And just like that, John was somewhere else again.

* * *

><p><em>Charley faced away from him, standing over the table with all the guns. Kyle had left the room, so it was just the two of them now. Still struggling to come to grips with all he'd seen in the last hour or so, John joined Charley at the table as the man checked every weapon. He handled the Mossberg with practiced efficiency, a sight that disturbed John somehow. Charley, the kindest man he'd ever known, shouldn't be that comfortable with firearms. <em>

"_Had to pick up a few things," said Charley, seemingly reading John's thoughts. "Your mom wasn't always an expert either, you know."_

_Intellectually, John knew this, knew there was a time when his mother was just a regular person with the usual problems and aspirations. But he'd never seen her like that, so picturing it now was a challenge. Charley though, he'd been a normal, if uncommonly good guy when he first met John's mother. And now he was here, in a dilapidated tunnel, surrounded by weapons, and judging by the way Reese had answered to him, a top ranking member of the Resistance._

"_How…?" John asked, trailing off. There was another question he needed to voice, but couldn't. Fear and dread kept him from going there. _

_Charley put the gun down without letting go of it, moving his gaze back to John's. "Your mom set up a house after Michelle died, tried to find me a safe place."_

"_No one is ever safe." The words were a reflex response, out before John could stop them. They brought a grim smile to Charley's lips. That smile, and the shadow that fell over his face disturbed John even more than watching the older man handle weapons._

"_No, no you're right. But I was safe for awhile. Sarah…Sarah came to me after you left, asked for help."_

_Charley's face, the catch in his voice when he said that name, the fact that his mother wasn't here… Charley was working on the gun again, no longer looking at John. The Mossberg was one of his mom's favorite guns, and the repetitive behavior with the weapon was one of her most prominent habits. The dull light in the room shone against that chain around Charley's neck, the one John noted when the older man first came in. There were rings attached, two of them. They bobbed against each other when Charley moved._

"_Charley," John began, struggling to talk past the lump in his throat, one so big that it threatened to choke him. "Where's mom?"_

_For an impossibly long moment, there was nothing from Charley. He froze completely, still gripping the weapon, head bowed. Then he released the gun, seeming to sag a little, even as he straightened up and turned to face John more fully. "John," he said, voice rough with grief. "I'm sorry, Johnny."_

_It wasn't a surprise. She'd lost weight, he'd asked her if she was sick and she'd deflected. There was no way in hell for him to show up here without Sarah Connor banging down the door to get to him. If she'd been off on a mission or… Charley would've told him. It wasn't a surprise, but John still felt like he'd been tossed into a brick wall by one of the machines. He couldn't breathe, he felt cold all over. Charley's hands were on his shoulders, the man was talking to him, but John couldn't hear it. It was his mom's voice in his ears, telling him to run, always telling him to run. He wanted to obey, run back to the room he'd first appeared in, conjure up that time bubble again, go back to his mother, stay in her arms until the coldness went away. But he couldn't run anywhere. His legs were ready to quit on him, he'd collapse any second now. His mother couldn't be dead. He couldn't picture her as the normal young waitress she'd once been, and he certainly couldn't picture a world without her in it. And yet here he was._

_John shrugged out of Charley's grasp, backing away on legs that desperately wanted to give out. He kept moving backwards, not knowing where to go, what to do. A noise managed to reach him through the haze, and he looked up just in time to see a redheaded woman stalk through the door. He had half a second to take in the rage and sorrow in her expression before her fist filled his vision, and the pain flooded his nerve endings._

_John stumbled, would've gone down completely if not for Charley. The strength of the punch seemed disproportionate to the body that had thrown it. He'd have a black eye for sure, and it was questionable whether or not he'd be able to _open _that eye at all. _

_There was a flurry of shouting, a new pair of footsteps racing through the door, John allowed Charley to lean him against a wall, unable to protest when the man's steadying hold disappeared. _

_After swimming in a haze of shock and pain for a few more moments, John straightened up, pulling away the hand that'd been rubbing at his face. He opened his eyes to find Charley arguing with the woman who'd just slugged him. She was thin, but toned, the red hair instantly grabbing attention. Behind her stood the soldier who'd been guarding the door. Dark haired with several days worth of stubble, the man made a half-hearted attempt at restraining the redhead, who seemed to have calmed down anyway._

"_What the _hell _do you think you're doing?" Charley shouted._

"_What I would've done years ago if the opportunity was there," the woman countered, voice cool._

"_I'm sorry, sir. She-"_

_Glaring at the young man, she got free of his hold, sending him back a few steps. "Back off, Travis. I gave you a concussion when you were sixteen, you think I can't do it again?"_

"_Savannah," Travis growled, teeth clenched._

_Savannah. The kid who'd raced into John's arms when Kaliba entered her home. The kid who'd told him all about her favorite duckling toys shortly before telling him about the machine residing in her mother's basement. John approached slowly, noting something vaguely familiar about the soldier known as Travis. Kyle had said something to this man before entering the room, something that caused stirrings in John's mind, but he'd been too shocked to truly hear it. Meanwhile, Savannah and Charley had gone back to arguing. _

"_Now is not the time for this," Charley said, voice laced with more steel than John had ever heard from him. _

"_Really. Excuse me, _sir_," Savannah countered, the last word dripping with derision. "Should we throw him a welcoming party first?"_

"_Watch yourself." Taking a breath, Charley's voice softened as he spoke again. "I just told him about Sarah. Give us some time to-"_

"_Time," Savannah repeated, cutting across what he meant to say. "Don't you think he's had enough time?" Moving to address John over Charley's shoulder Savannah scowled contemptuously at the boy who'd taught her how to tie her shoes. "Sorry for your loss, sorry you're just hearing about it now. The rest of us have been dealing with it for a lot longer."_

"_Lieutenant Gant, would you take Lieutenant Weaver back to her quarters, please." It wasn't a question. "Andrews is due to relieve you in two minutes."_

_Gant. Travis. John hadn't thought of his mother's ex in years, and he didn't have time to start now as he struggled to take in all that was happening._

_Savannah had turned her disgust back on Charley, eyes flashing. "I think we're past the point of you sending me to my room."_

"_You want to test that theory?" Charley asked, all softness gone from his voice. "You're off duty. I'm telling you to go get some rest."_

_Savannah shook her head at both of them, Charley in front of her, John slightly behind him. "You going to try protecting him from all this, sir? Or is it Dad that I'm talking to?_

_Charley's gaze grew impossibly cooler, his mouth drawn into a thin line. "Don't."_

_Savannah's eyes went to the chain around Charley's neck, from which the rings dangled. "Derek wouldn't like you wearing that," she said, nodding at the necklace. "It's a target."_

"_Derek isn't here right now. You're dismissed."_

"_Mom wouldn't like it either. Not that it matters anymore."_

"_Get out," Charley replied, voice dangerously low. _

"_You never answered my question. You going to protect him, like mom always wanted to? Like you protected _her_?"_

_By that point, Charley's face was cold stone. "Get. Out." _

_This time, Savannah listened, but not before one last glowering look at John and Charley. After a few quiet words with the older man, Gant followed in her wake. Despite her earlier behavior towards him, John saw Gant put a hand on Savannah's back when they left, and this time the redhead allowed the contact. With the door shut behind them, John was again left alone with Charley, and the question he was too afraid to ask. What had happened to his mother?_

* * *

><p>Sarah stood at the kitchen window with John beside her, watching as Charley and Savannah played a night game of tag. Sarah also watched her son, observing the strange, sad look on his face as he saw the other two interact. She was about to say something, what she didn't know, when John beat her to it.<p>

"You asked Travis to talk to me," he said, without accusation.

Sarah could only nod. True, John wasn't as closed-off as he'd been after Sarkissian, but it was obvious that he was hurting. Gant might not be an expert on time travel or robots, but he'd seen war, he'd experienced combat, a claim Sarah couldn't make. John wouldn't talk to her or Charley, at least not often. She'd thought that with someone he trusted, someone farther away from the situation who better understood the ravages of PTSD… "I thought it might help."

John nodded, still watching Charley and the redhead with that melancholy expression. "Derek had a child."

Sarah blinked repeatedly. That had come out of nowhere, as was usually the case when John decided to volunteer information about where he'd been. Not that she hadn't hoped for _something _tonight, but to hear this…

"He and Jesse, they had a son."

Jesse, the woman who'd nearly destroyed her family. The timeline John went to had obviously been altered. Had there been a child for the other Jesse, the one Derek had chosen in place of his loyalty to John? Sarah tried picturing the older Reese as a father, found it difficult.

"They named him Matthew. After my grandfather."

If he didn't have her attention already, John would've gotten it then. It'd always fallen to her, answering the Kyle questions, not that she'd had much to offer. Still, she'd always been the one to tell the Reese stories, often on the same nights she told her son about Judgment Day and future wars. The irony was that John now knew more about both those subjects than she did.

"Travis said I needed to talk to someone, said I'd go crazy if I didn't." Releasing a shaky breath, John wandered away from his mother, pulling up a seat at the table. When he, spoke, his voice was soft, hesitant.

"Can we…can we talk about my dad?"

Something inside her twisted painfully, even as Sarah smiled and joined her son. He'd said those words a hundred times when he was younger. He seemed so young right now.

So they talked about Kyle. Rather, John talked and Sarah sucked in every detail, committing it to memory. There wasn't enough information for her liking, but that would always be the case. Reese it seemed, would always be a hero, always be gone. And the family he could've had would never know enough about him.

The arrival of Charley and Savannah put a temporary halt to the conversation. Charley looked at the other two, noting their expressions and declaring that he and Ellison would entertain the girl. Sarah kissed him a thank you, which earned bouts of laughter, real from Savannah, manufactured from John. An hour later when they were still talking, Sarah joined Charley in saying goodnight to Savannah, then spoke to her lover in the hallway before returning to John.

It wasn't especially late when they finally finished, but the dealings with Travis and the subject they'd just covered, had left both Connors weary. Sarah preceded her son out of the kitchen, but not before being pulled into a surprise hug that lasted an unusually long time. Not that Sarah would ever complain,

She was pulled into another embrace when she entered her bedroom, this time by Charley. After the hug, he seemed unsure what to do, and Sarah didn't help with that right away. Instead she searched his face, finding nothing there that she didn't wish to see, nothing but love and concern.

Charley knew what she was up to, and he didn't blame her for it. He was irrational when it came to Gant; he recognized this whenever he wasn't in the same room as the man. Sarah had once accused him of being jealous of Kyle, but that wasn't true, not really. He owed Reese for Sarah and John, he never once forgot that. He just wished that he could save her the way Reese had, save her from the hell that was supposedly her fate. It was the same with Gant. On paper, Sarah would be better off with the ex-soldier. He'd be more useful in easing the constant weight resting on Sarah's shoulders, at least in a practical sense. Foolish or not, that was the cause of Charley's dislike. That, and the fact that he found Gant to be a rude drunk who displayed slightly psychotic tendencies.

Mostly though, it boiled down to Charley's own insecurities. Insecurities that were very much lessened when he overheard John talking to the machine. It wasn't that John said anything he didn't already realize, at least intellectually. Hearing it aloud though, that made a difference. Hearing it from _John _made more of a difference than Charley would've thought possible. Sarah was right, Kyle Reese had been right. John Connor, the man who was slowly emerging before Charley's eyes, you trusted him, you believed in what he told you.

They went to sleep early, Sarah putting her back against Charley's chest. He stroked her hair, brushed his mouth against the shell of her ear, but did nothing else. Finally, after too long had passed with her resting but not sleeping, "You okay?"

Sarah released a breath as he moved away slightly, enough to slip a hand under her shirt, rubbing slow, comforting circles on the skin of her back. After reveling in the contact for long, silent moments, she shifted so she could face him. Brushing a hand along his cheek, the line of his jaw, she stopped at the back of his neck, pulling gently until her lips found the corner of his mouth. She kissed him more fully then, but still tenderly. Charley had an arm draped around her waist, but he wasn't doing much, wasn't demanding anything. He kissed her temple, then her lips again. After that, Sarah put her back to him again, but not before saying she loved him, and not without making sure his arm stayed draped across her. Minutes later, they'd both drifted off.

* * *

><p>While the others slept, Cameron paced the perimeter of the house, doing her nightly circuit. Still, she never saw the tiny ripple of movement. She didn't see the machine known as Catherine Weaver slither into the house. She never knew that she wasn't the only one watching the tiny home in the desert.<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **Sorry again for the sickeningly long delay. I'm making an attempt to get back in the swing of this whole writing deal, so try to bear with me. Happy almost-birthday to the one with the zombie fixation. Here's that damn update you wanted so much. Might be 8 months late but…deal. Lol.

* * *

><p>With the acquisition of new identities for John and Cameron, Sarah was free to move on to the next item on her never-ending to-do list. Having changed homes more times than she could count, Sarah was well-used to the hassles of finding a new place to live. The fact that she'd gone through it often enough didn't make the process any less of a headache. Still, the desert safehouse, the only place they had since Kaliba found the lighthouse, simply wasn't big enough to hold everyone, even if Cameron didn't technically require a bed. Even if this hadn't been the case, there were other reasons to relocate.<p>

Charley hated it here. He'd never say as much, but Sarah knew. The memory of Michelle's death pervaded their surroundings, never mind that the tragedy hadn't actually occurred here. Desert was desert, and the scenery tended to blur together, no matter what particular stretch you happened to be on. Until fairly recently, she herself had found comfort in places like this. Far away from civilization, with miles of emptiness in front of her, it was almost possible for Sarah to believe that she was safe here, that the machines wouldn't be able to track her. It was an illusion, but it was something to cling to as she spent night after night with visions of death in her head, and a gun next to the pillow on which she laid it. Terrified and inexperienced as she was during that time after Kyle but before John, in a way, things had been easier then. Protecting him was so much simpler when he was still inside her, when he was unable to question her judgment, her sanity. When he was literally unable to pull away from her. While it was hard to look back on, lonely, sweltering days in a rundown shack with any level of fondness, certain aspects of her life in the desert hadn't been entirely horrible.

Despite all that, whatever solace she'd found in this place had been irreparably marred. Part of it was related to Charley, to Michelle. But even disregarding that, taking into account the good times shared here with Charley, Savannah, and, once she got over her anger with him, James, Sarah wanted to get gone. This place had never been home, not even when she was sampling Charley's latest dish, or brushing out Savannah's hair, or laying in bed with the two of them next to her while she read the girl a story. She'd read to John while she was pregnant. A local woman had gifted her with a battered copy of _The Wizard of Oz. _Sarah used the Spanish version of the familiar tale to improve her language skills, but mostly, it was a way of feeling closer to John, of making him seem more real. Of making her feel closer to her son.

This place would never be home, because John had never been here. And physical return or not, he still wasn't here with them, not really. He drifted off into another place, another time, even when he stood in the same room as everyone else. Even when he _was _present, mentally as well as physically...things would happen. Savannah would talk to him, mention things that she'd done with Aunt Sarah and Uncle Charley. And John would smile and pretend it didn't hurt, knowing that they'd moved on, lived their lives without him. He didn't blame her for that, not really, but this house was a physical manifestation of what he'd missed. Just as the building, the land surrounding it, represented something for Sarah. Two things, actually, the ultimate dichotomy. Seventeen years ago, it was the place she'd felt closest to her child. Three months ago, it became the place where she'd been the furthest away from him. She needed out, escape from the memories. So did Charley and John. Savannah needed a better approximation of a normal environment. James needed a room of his own. Cameron needed more space as well. More accurately, _Sarah _needed more space in which to hide from Cameron, when her resolution to be more tolerant of the machine became particularly hard to keep.

The house they eventually settled into was much like Sarah's last two residences, not including the desert place. It was bigger, quiet neighborhood, residential, lacking the desolation of its predecessor. There was a swing set, like at their first home after the time jump. It'd been harder this time, settling on a place. Most of the real estate wrangling had been left to Cameron and Ellison, both of whom had very different ideas of what constituted a smart buy. Ellison's wish for a quiet family neighborhood where Savannah stood a chance of gaining some friends her own age warred with Cameron's concerns about sightlines and security hazards and the building's ability to withstand high-caliber gunfire. Sarah let them fight it out, stepping in only when it came time to approve the final decision. When Charley questioned her on this unusually laissez-faire attitude, she'd merely shrugged. It was John who guessed the truth, though he waited until Charley was out of the room to call her on it. She found it rather entertaining, watching James butt heads with the machine. It got James used to living with the metal, got Cameron used to cohabitating with Ellison rather than planning the most efficient way of eliminating him. Besides, if Ellison was busy sparring with the machine, it kept Sarah from falling into that pattern herself. And then there was the other detail, the one she was having a harder time admitting. That she trusted them, Cameron and Ellison, trusted them to handle something important without her interference.

Moving day was surreal, to say the least. Savannah was excited by her new surroundings, happily testing out the swings and helping with what tasks she could. It made Sarah think of John, of all the times she'd performed this ritual with him. Even as a child, she couldn't recall him being that happy during a move. In fact, the only time she remembered any genuine cheerfulness on his part was when they'd moved in with Charley. Even when they'd settled down after the destruction of Cyberdyne, they hadn't _really _settled. Sarah hadn't let them. Charley had been the lone exception. Charley was supposed to mean permanence, for both of them.

There, too, was an element of unreality. She'd had a place like this in Nebraska. She'd left it, like all the others. Except that time she'd left something behind, something important. There shouldn't have been anything important, besides John, and Sarah hadn't expected the chance to reclaim what she'd given up for his sake. Except Charley was with her again, hauling boxes, holding doors, stocking cabinets. It was a kind of full circle moment, even though most everything had changed since moving day in Nebraska.

"What are you thinking about?" Charley asked, two steps behind her as they carried boxes upstairs.

Sparing a glance over her shoulder, Sarah played at nonchalance, shrugging as she had when he'd asked about her response to Cameron and Ellison.

Charley shook his head, clasping her hand as soon as the burdens were set down in their new bedroom. "You used to get this look sometimes. A lot, actually. This look that used to make me nuts, because whenever it was there, I knew _you _weren't. You were somewhere else, thinking thoughts that I wasn't supposed to know about.

"You never said anything," Sarah replied. Expressing her feelings meant dwelling in them. Sarah glanced at the half-assembled bed they were standing in front of. She'd left the ring on his pillow, before she left for real.

"Would you have told me if I had?" Charley asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, "I assumed you'd tell me when you were ready."

After they were married. That's what he'd said, without so many words. There was a duffel in the corner, Charley's emergency bag. It contained all the important stuff, the essentials. Somewhere within that bag was his wedding ring. "I'm thinking I'm living with a she-version of the Tin Man."

"Not exactly new for you," Charley replied, smiling a bit because that's what Sarah was trying to do.

"No. I'm living with a female Tin Man, and this cop I spent a lot of time and energy trying to avoid."

Charley's smile widened, and he kissed her palm before releasing it. "Not new either, is it?"

Not new Not exactly. But for all the moving days she'd had over the years, there'd never been any like this. There'd never been one with all of them together like this. It wasn't bad, not when Sarah could hear James laughing with Savannah. Not when she could go to sleep tonight, hear Cameron's heavy tread, know they had a security system far superior to the motion detectors that the cyborg was currently installing. It wasn't bad, just very, very surreal. Sarah told him this, offering a bemused smile, a shake of the head, and a brush of her fingers along his jaw before preceding him downstairs.

Unreality was soon replaced by slight tension as Sarah passed weapons to John and Charley, who then passed them to Cameron, who went about stashing them in various hiding places throughout the room. Including the floors and walls. Savannah, who'd conned Ellison into a before-lunch Popsicle, happened to walk in through the back door while Cameron was busy smashing a hole in the wall behind the couch, making a home for an M16 rifle. James followed a few seconds later, frowning as he watched Savannah take in the scene.

Sensing what would come next, Sarah sent the girl upstairs to finish unpacking her things before crossing the room to meet Ellison. "Don't start," she ordered. No anger laced her voice, but the warning there was unmistakable.

"Did I?" James asked. His eyes tracked Savannah until she disappeared into the upstairs hallway before returning to Cameron, who wielded the hammer she was using to carve out space for their weapons arsenal.

"You're about to," Sarah replied, arms crossed over her chest as she watched the others work. It was an old argument with them, carried on in sidelong looks of disapproval and muttered debates from the corners of mouths. A decline in frequency and intensity did nothing to settle the issue altogether, as evidenced by the fact that James didn't deny her accusation.

"She shouldn't be seeing things like that, not today."

He was looking at her now, and Sarah returned the gaze for a moment, acknowledging the point. She understood his need to give the kid a normal childhood. Shared it, in fact. But there were other needs to consider, and he knew that, even if he still chose to rail against it. "Today's no different than any other day," Sarah countered, suppressing the pang of guilt as she discounted Savannah's happiness with a more conventional living space. "And she's used to it."

James nodded. Savannah had long ago stopped reacting to the presence of guns or bomb-making material in the places where she ate dinner or played with her toys. "She is," he said. "That's what worries me."

"You don't think it worries me? It does. We all have to be worried, about a lot of things. Bigger things. And this," she continued, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings, at a house built for a family, at the far wall with the holes in it, "this is what I can give her. This. You. Charley."

"I know. Is that supposed to be enough?"

Not quite rhetorical, but tinged with a familiar resignation. Because they'd played this scene before, they both knew that neither would win. "It has to be," Sarah replied, trapping him in her gaze until she saw him register the truth, the inevitability of this. It didn't take long, not nearly as long as it used to. She said with her eyes what she used to say aloud, what didn't need to be verbalized anymore. What she didn't want to think about anymore.

James knew Sarah would take the girl from his life, if it came to that, if she thought that his presence undermined the child's safety. Things had changed, she wouldn't _want _to, she wouldn't relish the opportunity to do so with a clear conscience. It would hurt her, it would scar the relationship with Savannah, but James had seen the medical reports from Pescadero. He knew that Sarah Connor was used to scars. "It's my nephew's birthday today," he said, unsure where the words came from.

Some of the tension left Sarah's body. At least she knew what was triggering this now. "I'm sorry," she told him.

James shrugged, looking at Savannah instead of her. "It's not something to be sorry about."

Sarah disagreed, but said nothing. He had a big family, she knew that much. Lots of siblings, nieces, nephews. Lots of good childhood memories, from what she could tell. He'd grown up with the kind of happiness he wanted Savannah to have. "What's his name? How old?"

James glanced at hr again, surprise showing on his face. He hadn't expected her ask. She rarely asked about things like this, even when he gave her an opening. "Robbie. He's six."

The note of affection in Ellison's voice was mixed with pain, and for an instant, Sarah hated herself. She'd dismissed him after Mexico, dismissed the loss of his marriage and career. She still considered those small prices, all things considered. But there was more to it than that. She'd left behind nothing of her old life. At nineteen, her mother was dead, her friends, Reese. Michelle was dead, and Charley's parents had been killed in a car wreck before Sarah knew him. James still had people who loved him. He'd traded that to make an attempt here, so Savannah would have a semblance of life and family.

Sarah felt like she should thank him for that, perhaps apologize for thinking of taking Savannah from him when he'd given so much for her sake. Instead she said "I'm sorry about Robbie," meaning it. Then she left him, crossing to another part of the room to sort out more of her gun collection.

* * *

><p>John should've been focused on the boxes he was trying to sort. Leaving Cameron to handle placement of the remaining firearms, he'd moved on to a new task. Or should have. He'd moved away from Cameron so he could actually make a go at productivity, but the attempt was a failure so far.<p>

John wasn't so wrapped up in his observation of the machine that he didn't notice Charley's approach. Tearing his gaze from Cameron, John feigned concentration on his work, as if separating the kitchen supplies from Savannah's toys from the ammunition stash was all-engrossing.

"_Who're you looking at right now?" Charley's voice. Holding equal amounts of compassion, concern…and warning._

'_Cameron' almost left his mouth. Even with the different eyes and the smile that wasn't remotely mechanical, it took him several moments to get the name right. "Allison."_

"_Are you. Really?"_

_His response was a muttered obscenity, not quiet enough for Charley to miss. Allison couldn't hear it,, not from across the room. Cameron would've heard._

"_John-"_

"_What do you want from me, Charley?" He hadn't meant to snap, but couldn't bring himself to apologize. _

"_I want you to remember who that is."_

_Still compassion, still worry for him, still with the warning, too. "Who're you looking out for, Charley? Her or me?"_

"_Who said it was one or the other?"_

"You okay?"

It was an effort, remembering that the man standing next to him now wasn't the man who'd said those words. The weariness was gone from Charley's voice; his hair hadn't grayed out, but still. Keeping two realities separate in his head was much worse than time-lag. "Yeah," he replied, automatically.

The older man nodded, but his eyes drifted in Cameron's direction. "How okay?"

John stopped pretending to care about the boxes, giving his answer the consideration it deserved. 'Six," he said. It was a system between them. John was never totally okay anymore, and Charley wanted a way of gauging his emotional state. Ten was the bad end of the scale.

Charley nodded again, still watching the machine across the room. "Who're you thinking about right now?" he asked, voice level and non-threatening.

John suppressed a shiver at the feeling of déjà vu, without answering the question. He'd told Charley about the connection between Allison and Cameron. Part of him hadn't wanted to, hadn't wanted to lay all that confusion out for another person. A bigger part had needed to do just that. His mother hadn't said anything, though John was sure she knew. Charley would've told her, saving John from having to do so himself. He could've said nothing of course, left Allison as just another part of a timeline that didn't exist anymore, no more important than any of the other soldiers he'd encountered there. But there were already enough things about that place which he'd never tell her about, her or Charley.

It was strange. He'd spent a long, exhausting year, desperately yearning to speak to his mother for just a few more seconds. Now she was here, and he went to Charley instead. Part of it had to be that Charley had been _there_, too, a familiar presence in a place where comfort had been sorely lacking. And, much as he loved his mother, Charley was simply easier to talk to about certain things. He didn't trust or understand Cameron, at least not fully. But he was there, and he tried, and he didn't overwhelm John with his presence or his opinions, the way Sarah sometimes did. There was also the natural aversion to discussing girl trouble, human or cyborg, with his mother.

"I'm going to take this upstairs," John declared, snatching up a box without checking the label. Trying at a smile to soften the abruptness, John still retreated as fast as he could. Charley might not have pushed the subject of how he was coping, but suddenly John felt that he couldn't take the risk of being questioned further. As he jogged upstairs, he heard his name from his mom's lips, heard Charley speaking to her in a low tone. In the older man's absence, John knew that he would've been followed. This time Sarah relented, though John could see the hesitance on her face without having to look at her.

Retreating to his new room (mercifully free of childish décor), John set the box on his bed, head bowed. The déjà vu with Charley hadn't helped him sort out past from present. Future from present. Dammit, he couldn't even keep that much straight.

Trying to force his attention elsewhere, John went about opening the box he'd pretended was his. Unless he was very lucky and it was filled with computer components, he'd have to sneak down later and hope no one pressed him about why he'd taken Savannah's toys.

The box's contents only served to worsen his sense of unreality. Swallowing past the tightness in his throat, John removed one of the old cassette tapes, carefully gripping it between his fingers. The knowledge that he was invading his mother's privacy warred with the knowledge that these were _his_ tapes anyway. Besides, he already knew every piece of information on them. The one in his hand was fairly recent, the first of the new batch. New meaning the ones she'd made after his jump to the future. He lacked Cameron's memory banks, he'd never recite the tape word for word, but he knew it pretty damn well.

Another moment of absurdity. His mother was downstairs. He could leave this room and be in her arms in a handful of seconds. She was here, she was healthy, she was alive. And John still felt as if she weren't, felt as he had when these damn tapes were the closest he could get to his mom. Heavily, he dropped onto the edge of his bed, gripping the comforter in one hand and the tape in the other. Trapped in an unwanted storm of confused grief, John heard the indistinct murmur of his mother's voice somewhere below. In his mind, and much clearer, he heard the tape in his hand, the first one she'd made after he left.

_I love you, John. I miss you. Charley's here, and he misses you too._

* * *

><p>"<em>It wasn't the cancer."<em>

_The voice was hollow, barely recognizable as his own. Charley had made him sit down, pulled a ragged desk chair from somewhere. John was only distantly aware of this, just as he was distantly aware of Charley's slow release of breath. He sat across from the man, a desk between them. Charley would've gotten closer if John allowed it, but that didn't happen. Unable even to hold eye contact, John stared at his hands, clenched tightly enough in his lap that the knuckles had gone white. Closing his eyes made the world stop spinning, but did nothing for the nausea. He supposed part of that could be a side effect of the time travel. Mostly though it was incomprehensible, unrelenting grief that threatened to bring him down harder and faster than Savannah's fist ever could. His cheek must be throbbing where her fist struck home, but John wasn't feeling it._

"_Tell me it wasn't the cancer," he demanded, nails cutting into the flesh of his palms. If it wasn't cancer, then it could be fixed. Stopped. He had to stop it. His mother said she'd stop Skynet, but only if he stopped her from…he couldn't voice the thought, even within the confines of his own mind. _

"_It wasn't the cancer."_

_Fighting off the tears that threatened to choke him, John finally locked eyes with the other man, not quite ready to believe. "She…she's sick. She's lost weight." He_ _couldn't handle referring to his mother in the past tense._

_Charley's face shifted momentarily, indicating that he'd noted the difference, then he was all gentle compassion again. "She was stressed, not sick. She told me about that man from Kaliba, the one she-"_

"_Winston."_

"_Winston," Charley repeated. "She was torturing herself with that and then-"_

"_Then she was_ _tortured."_

_A muscle jumped in Charley's jaw, but he kept talking. "Yeah. She wasn't sleeping enough, wasn't eating enough. She just…"_

'_Made herself sick," John finished. It wasn't cancer; he should've felt at least some happiness. He didn't. "She made herself sick and I let her._

"_John-"_

"_I didn't even know until Cameron told me."_

"_It wasn't your fault, Johnny."_

"_Riley…I made everything so much worse for her because of Riley. I should've-"_

"_Stop it, John."_

_Only a few words, but they cut through John's ramblings like the hunting knives he'd learned to use as a child. Not the exact tone Charley had used when he told Savannah to get out, but close enough to bring John up short. _

"_Listen," Charley ordered, softening his voice without dropping that edge of command. "Whatever you think should've happened…none of it matters. What ifs get you nowhere, trust me on that. There are a thousand things in the last couple decades that should've happened, but didn't. Or vice-versa. You're not supposed to be here, for one."_

_There might have been a hint of recrimination there, but John honestly couldn't be sure. All he could do was stare at the older man. Charley's gaze was too intense to allow anything different. _

"_This," said Charley, gesturing vaguely at the dilapidated excuse for an office, "none of this is supposed to _be _Johnny."_

_John shook his head, a vain attempt at refutation. "We knew this could happen. Mom used to say that the best we could do was-"_

"_-work for the best, plan for the worst, I know. And you know that's not what I mean." The edge in his voice sharpened. Charley leaned forward in his chair. "I shouldn't be the one sitting here, John."_

_There was no more denial. He'd known already, just hadn't wanted to hear it voiced from this man he respected so much, who's approval and respect meant so much to _him_. "It was my job," he said, despondency threatening to choke him again. "My fate. And I left it you."_

_Charley's demeanor softened again, though he seemed to have some trouble getting the words out. "You did what you thought was right. Leader or not, legend or not, that's all anyone can do."_

_He wasn't the legend though. That was his mother's role, at least according to Kyle Reese. John opened his mouth to ask. If not cancer, then how? The words wouldn't come. In the first place, he didn't think he was strong enough yet. And if he didn't have the details, he could have some distance from it, keep thinking that his mother's death, that all of this was merely a screwed up jaunt in dreamland. And then there was Charley. John might bear the physical effect of it, but Savannah's rage had been just as focused on Charley, the man she called dad, as it was on John. She'd mentioned something about protection for his mother, or lack of it. He may've killed a man to save her life, but John still struggled with the notion of his mom needing protection_

"_Did…did she see all this?" He had to know if she'd lived long enough to witness all their efforts come to nothing. A moment later, John wished he'd skipped the question. _

"_Yes."_

_John shook his head, vision blurring with tears he couldn't fight. She wasn't dead. She wasn't. He needed her too much for that to be true. He closed his eyes, as if that would help anything._

"_John. Hey. Johnny."_

_Footsteps, a hand on his shoulder. John kept his eyes shut._

"_Look at me. _Look _at me, John."_

_Reluctantly, John obeyed. Charley was kneeling at his level. His eyes were sad and worried, concerned. And there was also steely determination there, enough to loosen the knot in John's stomach, at least somewhat._

"_We can change things. We _have _changed things. It doesn't have to be like this. We're going to get you home. I promise, we're going to get you home."_

_John couldn't speak. He wanted to say something about Cameron, how he couldn't leave without her. He wanted to ask about his mother. He wanted to grab onto the older man and cry. Before he could do any of those things, Charley's door flew open._

_The blonde whirlwind barely spared John a glance as she entered. She went straight to Charley, speaking quickly and clearly. "Hey. Lauren needs another pair of hands. Lyles got hit with a plasma blast, metal ambushed his patrol route. Lauren thinks she might be able to keep him breathing, but the trainees can't-"_

_Charley was up and moving already, putting a hand up to silence her. He was decades older, but he moved like a young man. With a speed and purpose John first saw in his old kitchen, when his uncle was hemorrhaging on their table. _

_After the promise, the attempt to reassure him that he wasn't alone in this, all John got was an apologetic look, a few quick words and the thud of boots running down the corridor. Then Charley was gone. This would become a familiar sight to John. Soon enough he'd learn that there were never enough people with real medical training. The young blonde would become familiar too. When she wasn't asking for a field assist, she would come to Charley about shortages in supplies, vaccines, beds for the sick and wounded. Never enough people, never enough of anything._

_For now, John was left alone and unsure. He didn't know where to go, what to do. He spent a minute just sitting there with his head down, trying not to throw up. The smell here was overwhelming, though everyone else seemed used to it. Had his mother gotten used to it? How long had she lived in this before it all ended for her?_

_Feeling like a caged animal, John stood up abruptly, overturning the chair. His legs still threatened to give out, and he clutched the edge of Charley's desk to keep himself from falling. It was then that he saw his mother, and his knees almost quit on him anyway._

_It was only a photo, old and battered at that, but it was enough to bring the tears again. John took the picture in a shaking hand. It was bent and torn, and it was a window to another time. His mother sat on a swing, in a yard he didn't know. Savannah was in her lap, smiling for the camera. Charley was behind them, bent so his arm rested on Sarah's shoulders. Of the three, Savannah was clearly the happiest. Charley's expression was a little heavier, but the smile on his face was genuine, if a little forced. His mom was different. The affection in her eyes was real, but that was overshadowed by pain and sadness. Her smile was hard to look at, and the green in her eyes seemed to have dulled. John wasn't foolish enough to blame this on the condition of the photograph. _

_Someone cleared their throat behind him and John dropped the picture as if he'd been scalded. Absurdly, he wondered how Kyle Reese would manage to save his mother without the picture, the one John was supposed to give him. Maybe Charley had that one too. Maybe this time _Charley _was supposed to play matchmaker._

_Shaking his head to clear it, John rubbed roughly at his eyes before turning to face the next visitor. It was the young soldier from before, the one who led Savannah away. Travis Gant stood in the doorway with an expression that was equal parts awe and awkwardness. _

"_Hey. I uh, I caught Charley and my sister on the run. He asked me to get you to your room okay."_

"_Your sister," John said slowly. It wasn't the thing to ask about right now, but his brain didn't seem to realize that._

"_Sorry," Travis responded, stepping into the room and extending his hand. "Travis Gant. Anna's my big sister. She works in medical. Charley, Charley trained her in…" He trailed off for a moment, then, "You knew-"_

"_Your dad," John finished, mechanically returning the handshake. A flash of fear hit him as he thought of the elder Travis Gant. "Is he-"_

"_He's fine," the son responded, anticipating the question. "He's at another base a few days from here. Him and James are tormenting new recruits to make it harder for the metal to kill them." _

_James. Ellison. John tried making that work, tried to put Gant's constant cursing and volatility against what he'd seen of Ellison's demeanor. It didn't add up._

"_It's a good cop/bad cop thing," the younger Gant explained. "Dad keeps the new ones from getting dead by the metal; James keeps them from killing dad in his sleep after he runs them ragged."_

_Gant smiled as he said that, almost smirked. It could've been an irritating expression, but it wasn't. With that look, John saw his mother's ex, couldn't imagine how he hadn't made the connection right away. The son's tone at he spoke of the recruits and his father was close to how the elder Gant used to sound when he listened to Sarah's doomsday talk. John wondered how Travis reacted when he realized Sarah's horror stories were for real. _

"_They should be here within a few days. That was always the plan for after you came back, get everyone back in one place."_

_The younger Gant proceeded to tell John about Sarah and his father meeting up nearly twenty years before. He couldn't hear the conversation, but Sarah must've been more convincing than usual because suddenly she and Charley, Ellison and Savannah were living with them. There was reconstruction of the desert ranch, fortification. He remembered his sixth birthday better than any other because the day after was when they moved into the bunker._

_Gant talked more after escorting John to a cold room with a cot and an incredibly thin blanket. To John, some of it felt rehearsed, like he'd practiced it over the years. He wondered if that had been part of the plan too, Gant playing historian if Charley couldn't. _

_John didn't talk at all, and eventually Gant stopped. Then they were standing there in silence and this time the expression on Gant's face _did _annoy John. To his credit, Travis picked up on that, and had the grace to look ashamed._

"_Sorry," he said. But as he continued speaking, the awed disbelief that'd left his face remained in his voice. "You just…. They'd talk about you. Savannah met you before so it wasn't like I didn't know you were real but…Goddamn man. The _way _they would talk about you, with you not being there. You were like this…this ghost or something."_

_He'd barely managed to half-listen during all of Gant's explanations. The mention of ghosts brought it to the surface, the question he'd been too shocked and afraid to ask. "What happened to my mother?"_

_It came out choked and abrupt and Gant's attention was suddenly captivated by something on the hard, filthy floor. "I…when Charley gets back-"_

"_I can't wait that long." It was true. He shouldn't be putting this on a stranger, but the no knowing threatened to tear him apart. Besides, he didn't trust himself not to lose it with Charley. _

_Gant ran his fingers through military-short hair that was still dirty. He swallowed audibly, and there was naked pain in his eyes when he looked up again. Still, his voice was steady and he held John's eyes as he forced the words out. She'd been leading a squad to a meeting with officers from a nearby base. It was supposed to be routine, a relatively safe area._

"_No one is ever safe." The words were reflex, and it didn't sound as if he'd been the one to speak them. "Nowhere is safe."_

_If it was possible, Gant looked even more pained. Still, he nodded and continued. The machines came from nowhere, attacked them from all sides. There'd been little time for resistance. _

_John thought of his mother surrounded by the things she'd been fighting nearly all her life, the things she'd feared and hated so much. She would've gone down fighting, he knew that much. But what had finally done it? A blast from one of the plasma rifles he'd heard of but only now seen in reality? Had one of those ripped through her, left her body a smoking ruin? Was it some kind of explosion? Cold metal fingers snapping the bones of her neck? "Were you there?"_

_Gant wasn't. One of the soldiers got off a few radio transmissions before the machines wiped him out._

_He shouldn't have asked. All John had accomplished by asking about this was to open his mind up to more questions. Poisonous questions, buzzing around like wasps in his brain. He wondered what her last thought had been, if she'd had time to reflect on the fact that he'd let her down, abandoned her to the worst possible fate._

_He was near-breaking by then and he turned away from Gant, asked him to leave. Travis seemed equal parts reluctant and relieved to be gone. He said some things John couldn't hear over the pounding in his head. All he heard clearly was the last thing Gant said before making his exit._

"_I'm sorry. Even my dad…we all loved her."_

_It could've been hours or minutes before Charley returned. Either way, he found John pale and exhausted, with his face pressed into a pillow that smelled of old blood. Charley himself had spots of red on his clothes, as he had after saving Derek. John's mother had had to wash the stains out before he left. That wasn't a possibility anymore._

_He came bearing apologies for having to leave, and a gift. The tapes were John's he explained. He needed to be careful with them. There was information about Kyle Reese, and other things. John stared at the cassette player as if it were the most complicated thing he'd ever seen, stared at the box of tapes as if they were a bomb waiting to go off. Charley took one at random, though there were dates on each, got it ready to play for him. More words John barely made out, a hand on his shoulder. He must've tried sending Charley away, but he didn't hear himself say the words._

_Charley promised again that he'd get home. In some distant part of his brain, John thought about Cameron, how he couldn't leave here without her. If he voiced that thought, he didn't hear himself do it. Charley lingered at the door, but didn't open it. Hunched on the cot and without planning to do it, John hit play on the cassette player. When his mother's voice hit his ears, he sagged. Collapsed in on himself. From the corner of his eye right before pressing his face into his arm, he thought he saw Charley go rigid. _

_I love you John. I miss you. Charley's here, and he misses you too. _

_He didn't know if that strangled noise came before or after Charley pulled him up, crushing him in a hug. It actually hurt a little, the strength of it. John didn't care. He did what he'd wanted to do earlier. He held on to the older man and he sobbed. He thought Charley might be crying too, but not nearly as much as John was. He was shaking all over, thought he'd end up on the floor. He didn't. Charley kept holding him, kept telling him it wouldn't turn out like this, that they'd get him home._

* * *

><p>It took longer than Sarah would've liked for John to rejoin the moving efforts. Quick looks shared with Charley were the only thing that kept her from barging into his room. The fact that those were enough to keep her out (barely) was a testament to her trust in him. She was still relieved when John came downstairs, laptop under his arm.<p>

"I see how it is," Charley joked, stepping past John with a good-natured smirk on his face. "Hide until all the work is done."

Returning Charley's smile, he set his computer on the counter. "More like hide until the pizza shows up."

Sarah joined him in the kitchen, a small smile curving her own lips. If he'd heard their dinner plans, then he couldn't have been completely wrapped up in whatever he was struggling with. "Thought that might get you back down here."

The hug he gave her then would've shocked her a year ago. Now she was used to the unsolicited displays of affection, though they were becoming less common and less protracted. This embrace was so quick that Sarah didn't have time to respond before he was pulling back. A hug 'just because' should've pleased her, did in a way. The gestures would've been more comforting if not for the look in John's eyes every time he embraced her or kissed her forehead or helped her with something without being asked. He wouldn't say it and Sarah wouldn't ask him to, but the conversations they'd had and that look in his eye told her all she needed to know. Probably more than she wanted to.

The doorbell heralding the arrival of their dinner kept Sarah from dwelling over the possibility of her death. Cameron answered, and Sarah had to smirk as she listened to the cyborg dole out the exact amount owed for a tip. No guesswork, no 'let's just leave this much.' At least she'd learned to tip on the high side. Always the pragmatist, Cameron used to leave the bare minimum that custom dictated. The terrorist who used to be a waitress had put a quick end to that. At least Cameron listened to her about the small things.

Food was served, with John eating his while hunched over the computer. Sarah almost put a stop to it, thinking that he was tuning them out in favor of some computer game. That was usually the case after they moved, when he unpacked his memory discs or whatever they were, rediscovered some old game he'd been carting around for years. But it wasn't a game holding his attention this time, it was the list.

Sarah had questioned him numerous times on the viability of that list. He'd seen the future, he should know more about which entries actually led somewhere. At least that was her thinking. But as John pointed out, Derek had lived the future too, and he didn't have all the answers. Besides, no way of knowing _when _a person on that list might actually matter, as Sarah herself had pointed out when they investigated Silberman. John explained all these things and still, Sarah couldn't avoid the anger, though it was more directed at Future-John than the boy in her kitchen. Caution was all well and good, but Sarah wouldn't mind a little extra information every so often.

Different timelines. Other than the fact that the list was one of their only leads, the timeline argument was what John kept falling back on, the reason he'd been running down names since he got back. Different timelines, different outcomes, nothing more concrete than that. He couldn't seem to form the words for an explanation, but Sarah thought she understood. Andy Goode had existed in one timeline but not another. The Jesse who almost destroyed her son apparently wasn't the Jesse that Derek had known. So even if the list hadn't been a goldmine of information in the world John had returned from, that didn't mean it couldn't be useful now. Sarah accepted these arguments, despite her frustration over all the dead ends they'd chased because of that list. If John's mind was lost in research, it was less likely to get lost in memories of a future he didn't want to see.

So Sarah let him work at his laptop while they rest of them moved about the house, finishing the process of getting settled in. She and Charley were getting the feel of the new alarm system when Savannah cried out. They'd given her a box of plates, glasses, set her to work sorting them so that tomorrow's dinner wouldn't be had on paper plates. When they looked up, Savannah was clutching one hand with the other and there was blood dripping on the kitchen floor.

Sarah got there first, fighting off the adrenaline that'd come with Savannah's cry. Ever since Weaver showed up in the girl's room, Sarah had been on high alert. The new location did nothing to quell her anxieties. Weaver knew where they were, no doubting that. No doubting the fact that as much as Sarah loathed the thought of that thing in her home, the redhead _would _make an appearance.

Not tonight though, or so it seemed. A plate had broken during transit, Savannah hadn't noticed until she'd reached into the box and made contact with the broken glass. It wasn't a bad cut, as Charley assessed when he patched it up, but it was bad enough that most kids would've been wailing like banshees. Savannah didn't cry. There was that initial noise of distress and her eyes were brighter than usual as Charley dug around in the medical bag John grabbed for him, but she didn't cry. _Hadn't _cried in weeks, though Sarah knew she still had nightmares. About the men who came for her at her home, about the ones who came to the lighthouse. About Weaver, in the times when the cyborg did a bad job of imitating her mother. But Savannah hadn't cried since that night she'd clung to Sarah so fiercely, when Cameron kindly pointed out that the girl had wet herself out of fear.

Cameron, to her credit, arrived within moments, racing down the stairs with a gun in her hand and Ellison following in her wake. James had a weapon too, but Cameron was way ahead of him. Sarah silently thanked both of them, even as she waved them off. Ellison's care for Savannah was a given, but she hadn't been so sure of Cameron. And while Sarah suspected that Cameron questioned the point of keeping the child around, the cyborg kept whatever reservations she had to herself, not arguing when Sarah made it clear that the girl would be a mission priority from now on.

Guns disappeared, but Cameron and Ellison remained on hand as Charley took care of the cut. He waited until Savannah had retreated to her room before speaking again. "We're running low on supplies," he stated, regarding his med kit with a frown.

"Is that all we have?" James asked, his own mouth turning downward.

"Unless there's another stash somewhere that I don't know about."

"There isn't," said Cameron. "This is all we have."

Habit almost made Sarah snap at the machine for not mentioning this earlier, but it wasn't Cameron's fault. Their medical supplies had been dwindling long before John and Cameron came back, and Sarah had known it. Thing was, it was easier to fool herself into thinking they had more than they did when the supply drained slowly rather than all at once. It used to be that most of their stock would get used up during one or two very bad missions. However, on her last very bad mission, she'd gotten shot and almost bled to death. And after Charley saved her life, he chewed her out for recklessness, saying some things that hurt worse than the bullet that'd torn through her flesh.

He'd been right. John had been gone, Charley and Savannah weren't under her roof at the time, and Sarah got sloppy. After Savannah had to walk in and see her blood all over the floor, Sarah rethought her position. She needed to stop Judgment Day, for John, for everyone. But as much as she hated to admit it, that was a hell of a lot harder to do when there wasn't a terminator on her side. Without Cameron and without John's hacking skills, Sarah had to scale back on her activities. There'd been missions, injuries, but not the kind that completely depleted their med stock. Which was good, because the supplies they used were expensive and not sold in the typical first aid kit. And though there was money, there wasn't a huge surplus of it. Especially now, with most of their funds going to the acquisition of this house.

"We'll need to restock," Sarah stated.

Ellison's frown deepened. "We just moved in today. I hope you're not planning on blowing up any computer factories tomorrow."

Sarah gave what was, for her, an overly-bright smile. "Actually tomorrow I was going to look into joining the Neighborhood Watch around here. Blowing up factories isn't until next week. But we should restock before then, just to be on the safe side."

"No one is ever-" Cameron began.

"Please don't," Sarah interrupted.

Cameron changed the subject. "I can acquire more supplies."

"I know you can, you're not going to." John shot her a look, and Sarah took a breath, softening her tone. "I need you here, with Savannah. It's been too long since we've heard from Weaver."

"And you think that means she'll show up for a housewarming?" John asked.

"I think that I want you watching Savannah," Sarah said, addressing Cameron. She left out the part about also wanting to avoid any dead hospital workers. "We don't have the money or the contacts right now to get what we need."

"What about that man you've gone to before?" asked James. "Gant."

"Travis doesn't deal in that sort of thing," Sarah replied. She was fairly sure that if she asked, he'd track down someone who did. Alcoholism and PTSD aside, Travis maintained a larger net of contacts than she ever had. But considering that she'd effectively torn his world apart a few weeks earlier, Sarah thought it best to wait on contacting him again.

What happened next happened rather quickly. John's eyes went to the laptop, then to Charley. He opened his mouth to speak, but Charley beat him to it. "I'll go."

"What?" Sarah asked.

"I still have the uniform from work. I'll get what we need."

"No you won't."

"Sarah," Charley began.

"Mom," John said at near the same time.

"You're not going."

* * *

><p>Sarah was wrong about that, and she was still fuming a little as she watched Charley put on his work clothes. "Why did you keep that?" she asked.<p>

Charley looked at her over his shoulder. She stood behind him, near the bed, checking the clip in her gun for the third time in twenty minutes. She faced away from him, but the edge in her voice and her ramrod-straight posture left no doubts about her mood. "Nostalgia?" he said, more question than answer.

He hadn't given two weeks' notice at the hospital, hadn't bothered to turn in the uniform and supplies. Sarah had been telling him to leave for days before he actually went through with it. He tried not to wonder whether Michelle might've survived if they'd left earlier, before Cromartie could make his move. She'd been dead before she reached the hospital, but it wasn't the same one she and Charley had worked at. After her death, he hadn't been terribly concerned about returning thee to turn in his things and get a last paycheck. He wasn't sure why he'd kept the uniform, but at least it was serving a purpose again.

They needed med supplies, and as it turned out, they also had a lead to track. There was a surgeon on the list Laura Olin had made it her specialty for the last ten years to put soldiers back together after they'd sustained disfiguring injuries. She didn't work at the same hospital that Charley once had, which was good. No way he'd avoid recognition otherwise. But he had made occasional drop-offs there, and he knew the layout without having to consult the blueprints John had pulled. So while Charley restocked their supplies, Sarah would be talking to this Dr. Olin about her young son who'd gotten his face blown to hell while serving his country. At some point she'd get tearful, need a moment alone, and plant listening devices throughout the office. A cakewalk compared to what she usually did on a mission, nothing that should cause this much anxiety.

Pulling down her shirt so her gun wouldn't be visible, Sarah moved to get past Charley on her way out of the bedroom. She didn't make it. Charley snagged her hand, and when he moved to face her, she didn't yank it back, though part of her wanted to do just that. "What?"

"I'll be fine, Sarah." Her expression told him the reassurance wasn't enough. "You want to go in with the scary cyborg instead?" he asked.

"She stays with Savannah. We've covered this." Sarah was willing to concede that hearing Savannah cry out the other day had put her defenses in high gear, but that wasn't all there was to it. Worries about Weaver were never gone from her mind, but she'd watched their new neighbor watching _them _from across the street yesterday. Pleasant looking woman, thirty-something, had some nice plants in the front yard. She'd waved from her porch and Sarah was forced to do the same, all the while wondering if she was looking at Weaver. It wasn't paranoia when they really were out to get you. "Cameron needs to be here."

"I know. Does it sound like I'm arguing with you? You have a bad feeling, fine. I'm not questioning your instincts. But if it's not going to be Cameron then-"

Then the next logical choice was Charley. "I know," she replied, still not happy with that knowledge. She'd have to get used to sending him on errands far more dangerous than this, Sarah knew that too. Didn't help loosen the knots in her stomach.

"Hey," he said, brushing a hand under her chin until green eyes met his. "I can grab a few painkillers," he told her, lips quirked at the corners. "Did it practically every day, remember? Only difference now is that I'm not getting paid."

"Do you miss it?" Sarah asked after a moment, ignoring the attempt at humor. "The job?" She knew the answer to that one. She'd seen how unhappy he'd been at the lighthouse, even with Savannah there. And he still had the uniform.

Sighing, Charley weighed his words before answering, knowing she would catch a lie. "Do I miss helping people every day? Yeah." Before Sarah could look away like he knew she would, Charley leaned in and kissed her. He did it slowly, deliberately, holding the contact until he felt Sarah melt into him, felt some of the tension bleed out. Breaking the kiss, he rested his forehead against hers, speaking in a warm, quiet voice. "But now I get to help save everyone in the world, right?" Even if all that meant right now was grabbing a few painkillers.

Finally Sarah cracked a smile, running her hand along his chest. "Right," she murmured. She'd have to get him used to this at some point anyway. Better to start now, with something low risk.

"Okay," Charley said, brushing his lips over hers one last time. "Let's get out of here then.

* * *

><p>He'd downplayed his nervousness to Sarah. Downplayed it majorly. Small as his part in all this was, he'd still worried about screwing it up. Because eventually there would be bigger things he'd need to do, and if he couldn't pull this off… But Charley was managing pretty well as he stood in a supply room refilling his medical bag. He'd run into a staff member he knew, but he'd managed that okay, chatting briefly about how long it'd been since he'd made a stop here. Michelle said once that he had a tell when he lied. Sarah said that what he thought was always all over his face. If those things were true, it seemed they weren't noticeable to everyone.<p>

As he grabbed a few syringes, he wondered how Sarah was faring, wondered about this woman on the list. Charley's best guess would be that she aided John in the future, kept Resistance people alive, though John didn't know her. But that fighter who gave them the list had done so under Future-John's orders. The boy that Charley knew, he'd come from a place where that man, that version of himself never existed. That had to screw things up. Feeling the beginnings of a headache, Charley took some medication off a nearby shelf. Any moral issues he had with stealing from a hospital were nothing compared to the issues he had with being unprepared if something went bad. Without his consent, images flooded his brain, images of the last time he'd been in a hospital. Michelle was dead. He'd tended to John and Sarah after the cyborg went berserk, almost killed them. When Kaliba came for them at the lighthouse, there'd been an awful moment where he'd thought Savannah was shot. The idea of not being able to save them, of failing them as he had Michelle…it sent a shiver down his spine. And then he was standing stiff as a board, because the door was opening behind him.

Charley had to fight not to whirl around in a panic as he heard it close again, heard footsteps. Willing his features into a normal expression, he turned, only to find that he'd broken into a cold sweat for nothing..

"I'm done with the doctor," Sarah said as she moved toward him. "We had a timeframe, you're past it. I got worried."

Charley checked his watch. He still had fifteen minutes, but given her apprehension at making him part of this, he wasn't entirely surprised by her arrival. "If someone sees you," he began. They'd gone over which room he would be in, which route he would take, but that was for the sake of emergencies and-

"Hallway's clear, and I'm here now," Sarah said briskly, cutting across Charley's thoughts. "So what else do you need?"

Charley frowned. There was an edge to her voice, but also a kind of distance he hadn't heard in awhile. She used to get this way when John was gone sometimes, get this demeanor that was partly anger, partly something else. She couldn't be thrilled about being in a hospital, not with memories of Pescadero. And talking about her war-scarred son had to have struck a nerve. Pointing her to some boxes on the opposite shelf, he asked for two more minutes and got a curt nod in response.

One of those minutes passed in silence as Sarah moved about the room, handing him supplies. Then she simply stopped in front of him, shoulders sagging a little. "We talked about John. She was nice, talked about scheduling a meeting. Thinks she can fix the physical things."

Physical things that Sarah had made up. "Sarah-"

"She says there are counselors here to help him with the mental part, the emotional. She talked a lot about that actually."

Still with that distance in her voice that used to scare him because it meant she was at a point too low for him to help her. "He's getting better."

"He still locks himself in his room for hours on end."

"Which might be a good sign. He's acting like every other teenage boy in the world." The joke fell flat, as he'd known it would. Sighing, he put his bag down on one of the shelves. "I promised you he'd be fine, remember?"

"Yes. Yes you did." Her fingers found his chest, like this morning. Unlike this morning, he wasn't the one who initiated the kiss. She leaned in too quickly, leaving no time for questions or protests.

His earlier bit of confidence fell to nothing. Charley knew then that he had in fact screwed up. Badly. Because the moment their lips touched, he knew that this wasn't Sarah. The kiss was cold. Dead. He couldn't think of it any more clearly than that because there were nails cutting into his flesh. He tried to pull back but an impossibly strong arm held him in place. No, it didn't feel like one arm. Felt like cold tendrils running all over his body, binding him. He couldn't move his head. The cold ran down his neck, under his shirt, across his spine. He couldn't breathe. That icy deadness had come alive. Invading his mouth. Blocking his airway. Suffocating him. When the kiss did break, it was only because that _thing _let it.

Charley gasped for air, barely keeping his footing as he was shoved brutally against the shelves. A bolt of agony radiated up his spine as small medical supplies were dislodged from their places, raining down on his head and shoulders. By the time he raised his eyes, he wasn't looking at Sarah anymore. He was looking at his dead wife. And when Weaver opened her mouth, there was no accent to be heard, no cultured tones. It was Michelle's voice that hit his ears.

"Hello Mr. Dixon. Good to see you again. You and I have things to discuss."


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: **Well, at least it didn't take 8 months this time. To the people who reviewed last chapter, my thanks and apologies. I usually respond to signed reviews, I got lazy this time, bad on me. But your feedback was very much appreciated, and I humbly request more of it this time.

On a different note. This chapter briefly references events in another fic of mine, 'Between Four Walls.' And that fic happens to contain a rape scene. It's not very detailed there, it's not very detailed here, but this section does contain images of non-consensual sex. So if that bothers anyone, please exit now. If you're still here, thanks for the support and enjoy the chapter.

* * *

><p>Charley's breath came in harsh, quick pants as he fought to refill his lungs. Trying not to vomit was also an issue, but that had less to do with near-suffocation than it did with that thing wearing his wife's face. Michelle-Weaver's features were cold and blank. Charley was assaulted with images of how Michelle sometimes looked in the days after she found out that Sarah wasn't dead. The rolling in his stomach worsened and he wanted to lean over and puke. Instead he straightened up as best he could, shots of agony still traversing the length of his spine. One hand went to the shelf she'd shoved him against, searching for balance. The other went to his lips. They felt bruised.<p>

"Believe me," Weaver said, still in Michelle's voice, "I enjoyed that just as much as you did."

Her tone reflected a hint of the revulsion Charley felt. It had to be all over his face. The disgust. The shock. The rage. "Get out. Do you understand me? Get out of her body."

"Her body?" Weaver parroted in a sickeningly familiar voice that also sounded nothing like Michelle. "I assure you Mr. Dixon, grave digging is not among my hobbies. Your wife remains exactly where you left her. In the ground."

Charley moved forward, one hand raised. He'd never conceived of striking a woman before, but this wasn't a woman. It was a liquid metal abomination. Unthinking, he belted her across the face, the face he'd woken up to every day for four years. The punch would've knocked her back, left her bleeding and swollen. If Charley were dealing with a human. But of course he wasn't, so instead of feeling fist on skin, there was the sensation of plunging his hand into freezing water. Then there was the sick realization that his hand had actually gone _through _her head. Charley yanked it back as fast as possible, but not quick enough to avoid the chills, the nausea that became impossibly worse.

The machine wagged a finger that became a silver blade, which cut into his thigh while Charley was still struggling to recover. The pants of his old uniform were sliced open near one of his pockets, and graze or not, Charley had to grit his teeth to stifle a cry as the flesh of his leg was torn into.

"Good," Weaver praised. "I don't think either of us wishes for me to have to silence you again." The machine mirrored Charley, brushing her lips with the hand that still looked human. This time it wasn't only her voice that reflected distaste. "Point of interest. If I hadn't gone into a more liquefied state just now, you would've broken every bone in your hand. I'd advise you not to try that again."

"What the hell do you want?" Charley hissed. "Why are you doing this?" Then he had to muffle another grunt as Weaver's free hand slammed into his chest, stealing his air again.

"Pay attention, Mr. Dixon. I've already explained that you and I need to have a discussion. As for my appearance," Weaver pulled the spear out of Charley's leg, ignoring the sound of pain that escaped his lips, even as he struggled to breathe. The spear became a hand again. A hand that travelled up his body in a slow, torturous trail that would've had Charley squirming in anxiety and disgust if Weaver's free hand wasn't still holding him in place. "I'm trying to a make a point."

The hand that wasn't pressing against his sternum had cone to rest near his throat. Weaver could crush his windpipe at any second, and Charley would die looking into eyes that had haunted him ever since he watched them close for the final time.

"You missed a spot shaving."

That was bad. Bad because it was something Michelle had actually said, over and over during the course of their marriage. And the words were spoken in such a way that Charley could almost believe he was speaking to his wife, if not for the fingernails. They still looked human, but as Weaver dug softly into the flesh of his neck, they felt like tiny knives.

"I know this is difficult for you, seeing me in this form. I also know it was difficult for you when the machine that is John Henry to me and Cromartie to you, made your wife a target."

Charley tried to push her away, shake his head. He was rewarded with sharp pinpricks of pain that left dots of blood on his chest and neck.

"_Listen_ to me, Mr. Dixon."

Weaver leaned in close, invading what was left of Charley's personal space. He'd never had a problem with claustrophobia, but he was very aware of how cramped this supply room was. Then it got impossibly worse. Weaver put her mouth against his ear. The way Sarah had that morning in Nebraska, right before she took off. The way she still did sometimes when they were alone. Supposedly alone.

"Cromartie deceived you, passed himself off as one of Mr. Ellison's colleagues."

Charley nearly seized. Not because of the words, though those were certainly true enough. Weaver still looked like Michelle, but she'd reverted to her own voice. Sort of. The Scottish lilt he'd heard in Savannah's room, that was there. Yet Michelle's voice wasn't completely gone. And Sarah's familiar tones, those were suddenly back too. Weaver spoke in a kind of hybrid voice, her own, mixed with the only two women Charley had ever loved. And it was the creepiest thing Charley had ever heard.

"He deceived you, and then your wife died. And in spite of all you've seen, you remain too easily deceived, Mr. Dixon. I suggest you work at distinguishing the wolf from the sheep. Unless you wish for someone else to die."

Charley didn't have time to digest that. Suddenly Weaver's hand was leaving his throat, though she kept pressure on his chest. She half-turned toward the door just as it swung open.

For long moments, Sarah couldn't react. The sight of Michelle Dixon was enough to stop her cold, never mind what she was doing to Charley. The blonde's lips curved into a frown. She seemed annoyed with the interruption. Sarah stared at her in shock, making the connection a millisecond before the cyborg opened her mouth. It was Catherine Weaver's voice that emerged.

"Shut the door, please. We're alone now, but that could change at any moment. This hospital is one of the busiest in the area. You humans require so much maintenance to remain functional. And don't bother with the gun. You and your group pointed them at me the last time we met, and I didn't appreciate it then either."

Sarah stopped herself from drawing the gun. Barely. It would be useless, except as a means of getting them found out, and possibly getting Charley killed. She shut the door, never taking her eyes off the machine that looked like Charley's wife. It was difficult. She didn't want to look at that face. Charley in jeopardy would've been bad enough, but that face made things so much worse. Still, Sarah did her best to hide the flood of emotions as she addressed Weaver. "Yeah well. I didn't appreciate you breaking into my house. I'd have much more _appreciation _for the world in general if you weren't init. Get the hell away from him." She hadn't expected the metal bitch to listen, so Sarah was surprised when Weaver let go of Charley, taking a few steps toward the door. Weaver moving toward her made it that much harder not to go for the gun at her waist. The coldness in the machine's eyes didn't help either.

"You seem to be under the impression that I'm required to follow your orders. That's a misconception I thought you would've been rid of by now. I hope I don't have to rid you of it myself someday. Fortunately for you, my business with Mr. Dixon is already complete."

"Business? You don't _have _business with him," Sarah snapped.

Weaver shook her head in the negative. "I'm afraid you're mistaken, hard as that notion is for you to comprehend. You've made Mr. Dixon a part of the Resistance. More importantly, you've made him one of the people responsible for my daughter."

"She's not your daughter." Charley spoke up for the first time since Sarah's arrival, echoing what Savannah told the machine the last time they met. His leg bled where she'd cut him and he clutched at it now, but he still managed some defiance.

Weaver didn't even look at him. "The argument is pointless. What's important is that you remember what I've told you." Sparing him a backward glance, the cyborg matched her face to her voice, once again using Michelle Dixon's speech pattern. "Honey."

Sarah lost it, giving up on her attempt to stay cool in front of the thing that embodied coldness. Before she could think better of it, Sarah was ordering the machine to speak like herself again, to look like herself. Or rather, to look like the human whose life she'd taken over. Weaver didn't listen this time. Her only reaction to Sarah's command was a slight smile that almost, _almost _touched her eyes.

"Mr. Dixon seems to have found this body quite appealing in the past. Did you find your wife appealing, Mr. Dixon?"

Charley was white as a ghost, trembling minutely. Weaver didn't see these things because she again didn't bother to face him. Sarah saw his reactions, saw the blood on his leg and throat and chest. Saw Michelle Dixon looking back at her. At that moment, Sarah hated Weaver as much as she'd hated the machine that took Kyle away, or the one twelve years later who'd tried to take John. "What the fuck are you doing?" Sarah snarled. "What did you say to him?"

"Something that was meant for him. Not you. Though I'm sure he'll tell you about it later, whether he wishes to or not. You're quite stubborn. Persistent. Admirable qualities. Admirable and infuriating."

"That mean I won't be getting a Christmas card? I suppose it was impossible for you share your little secret without making him bleed."

"Not impossible. Often I find that a hands-on approach is most effective in getting my point across. And before you lapse into righteous indignation over the state of Mr. Dixon, let me remind you that I've kept your son from harm on more than one occasion."

Sarah almost said something about the scars that now littered John's body, but stifled the urge. Maybe the injuries were meant to illustrate another kind of point, at least to Weaver. Regardless, the machine _had _restored Cameron, provided John with the means to get them both home. Which brought up something else that had been nagging at Sarah for weeks now. "Cameron doesn't remember anything that went on after she gave up her chip for your little science project. You going to try telling me that that's coincidental?"

Weaver's eyes narrowed, staring daggers at the brunette. "First of all, very few things in this world are coincidental. I believe you know that much. Secondly, that 'science project' may well be the thing that keeps this world and everyone in it alive. As for Cameron, she and John Henry were sharing a chip. Her relinquishing that chip to him did not erase what was programmed onto it. When John Henry downloaded his own programming to the chip, he essentially linked his consciousness to hers."

"They were sharing a brain?" Sarah asked, wishing John were here and trying not to sound blatantly clueless about the tech crap.

"Indeed," Weaver nodded, still using Michelle's voice. "John Henry could have overwritten her, used the entire CPU for his own purposes, but he didn't wish to do that. Apparently he thinks of her as a sister."

"How sweet." Sarah's words dripped with sarcasm, but her mind was spinning with the implications of this. Assuming of course that it wasn't complete bullshit. "So if he was so generous with his living space, why doesn't Cameron remember any of this?"

"An unfortunate consequence, to be sure. The chip was not built to hold that much data. There was risk of permanent damage if some of it was not removed. And no, I was not the one who performed that removal. When the CPU became overwhelmed with too much information, it automatically began deleting the most recent files. A protective measure, to prevent total shutdown."

"Right, that's not convenient at all, her losing everything from that specific time period."

"I've already given you an explanation. Shall I attempt to do so again, using smaller words? Or would you have preferred that her earlier files be destroyed? The ones created by your son. The ones that keep her from reverting into a killer for Skynet?"

Sarah had no response to that, and she hated herself for it. Still, she pressed on. "And what about John Henry? If they were both sharing an overloaded brain, that mean he has a bit of memory loss too?" Sarah doubted it. Very, very much. Yet Weaver's expression gave her cause to wonder. It was a strange combination of smile and scowl, and for the first time, Weaver seemed genuinely angry rather than simply annoyed. But it was a fleeting look, gone in the blink of an eye, and when Weaver spoke again, her voice was cool as ever.

"How is it that every encounter I have with you is more pleasant than the last? A true delight. Yet I think it's time we parted company. But first," the sleeve of Weaver's shirt shimmered and contorted briefly. In another blink of the eye, there was a small object in Weaver's hand.

"I stumbled across this while running an errand. It's not mine, and John Henry isn't one to accessorize, so I assume it belongs to one of yours. You're welcome."

Weaver threw the thing underhand, with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. Sarah's first instinct was to duck, as if from a grenade blast. Instead she made the catch, found herself holding a watch on a chain. It took her too long to place it, she hadn't seen the thing years. She'd taken it from one of the men that came after Reese, intended to pawn it if her money situation became too desperate Seemed a fair trade, considering that this particular suitor had broken her wrist and blackened her eye while a two-year-old John watched from across the room. She'd thought it lost or forgotten, but if the machine had it… "This was in your basement."

Weaver nodded slightly. "Nothing metal goes through."

Which meant she'd been digging around evidence lockers, looking to salvage the remains of her fucked up little projects. Before Sarah could call her on this, Weaver had transformed. Michelle Dixon's form disappeared, replaced by a woman in her forties, wearing a nurse's uniform. The next time Weaver opened her mouth, Michelle's voice was replaced with the Scottish accent Sarah had come to loathe. Still, the disappearance of Charley's wife was a major relief.

"You'll want to be on your way. Mr. Dixon looks a little worse for wear."

Sarah would've snapped about that, about the cause of Charley's injuries. Hell, she might've thrown in a Nurse Ratched comment, if Weaver hadn't turned her attention to Charley. He was still pale, shaky. He'd dropped out of the confrontation with Weaver, and though Sarah was happy about that, she worried that he seemed to be in shock.

"You people should be more careful with your things, Weaver admonished, bending to pick something even smaller off the floor. She held it out to Charley and he took it, apparently on autopilot. A hint of gold was visible as the object caught the light, then Weaver was melting into the floor where the thing had just lain. "Use the exit two corridors to the east, I'll make sure it's clear. Be sure to tell my daughter I say hello. Tell her I miss her terribly and that we'll speak again soon."

And then Weaver was gone, leaving Sarah adrift in a flood of worry and anger. A few days ago, she'd considered the abstract possibility of having to separate Ellison and Savannah. Or of Ellison wanting to keep Savannah from _her_. But when it came down to it, James loved the child and Sarah knew it. They'd disagree, but they'd deal, because they shared a common goal. At the end of the day, Sarah really didn't have to worry about losing Savannah to Ellison. Weaver though, she was something else entirely.

Forcing down her concern for the child, Sarah crossed to Charley. He wasn't moving, wasn't putting pressure on the leg wound. It didn't look bad, but Sarah still cursed to herself. There was a hole in his pocket , where Weaver must've sliced into him. Belatedly, Sarah's eyes fell on his open palm, where Weaver had placed the fallen object. Then her breath caught, because she recognized that too, recognized it a lot faster than she had the watch.

* * *

><p>"A bomb," Sarah said slowly, voice low and dangerous. She stood in the living room, glaring at John and doing her best to ignore the machine at his side. The coffee table separated them, her on one side, John and Cameron on the other. Two against one. "Around your <em>neck<em>," she continued. The watch was in her hands, and it was a real effort not to snap the chain.

"The bomb was not around his neck," Cameron corrected. "Only the trigger. The explosive itself was in my skull."

Sarah clenched the watch until her knuckles were white. "What kind of game are you playing at, girlie? You give him the means to kill you, you disappear, and then the first thing you say to him after you wake up is that he can't be trusted? Why give this," she held up the watch, "to someone you couldn't trust?"

John winced, fighting off pain and anger. He'd told Charley what Cameron had said, why he was so angry with her immediately following their return. He'd told Charley, and nearly forgotten that his mom knew as well. Whether the bad feelings he experienced now were directed at her or Cameron, John couldn't say. Still, his mother hadn't used that nickname in a small eternity. Context aside, he'd take whatever small bits of progress he could get. "Mom," he began.

"I gave him the trigger before your meeting with Catherine Weaver. The situation changed after I was reactivated." Cameron tilted her head. "Are you angry because I used that watch? I'm sorry. I found it in the garage, and given the amount of dust-"

"It's not about the watch," Sarah snapped. Though it sort of was. On top of hoarding spare terminator parts, Cameron had gone through Sarah's things, used one of them to make a bomb. The trigger for which had been around her son's neck. Over his heart. "Why give this to him and not me? Why hide it?"

John could've answered that one, almost did, but Cameron beat him to it.

"You have a long history of threatening to blow my head off. Given that, and given your degree of anger with me at the time-"

"At the time? Try right this second."

"All right stop," John ordered, earning a bland stare from Cameron and a killing look from his mother. He risked her wrath in the interest of containing the situation, and because he was seriously sick of both of them talking about him like he wasn't in the room. "Mom, it's done. Nothing happened, and it doesn't matter anymore, because the explosive is gone."

"Yes," Cameron agreed, a hint of emotion breaking through the monotone. "The explosive was planted in my old body, which is gone now."

John shot her a curious look. "You sound disappointed."

"Placing the bomb near my chip required cutting into my own skull. It was challenging. Time-consuming."

"Sorry you were so inconvenienced," Sarah practically growled.

"Mom," John said before Cameron could say anything that would further piss her off. "It's done. You're angry I kept something else from you, I get that. I'm sorry. Just remember that Cameron's not the one who hurt Charley."

Sarah blinked, studied him. Then she shook her head and swore to herself. Briefly, her gaze moved toward the ceiling. Ellison had received an adequate rundown of the day's events, then taken it upon himself to keep Savannah away from what was happening now. Charley was above their heads, puking his guts out. At least that was what he'd been doing when he essentially ordered Sarah to leave him alone. Sighing, Sarah dropped the watch on the table, trying to heed John's words. She wasn't thrilled with either of them right now, she didn't like secrets, but still. She was looking for an excuse to fight, particularly with Cameron. Because the metal she _really _wanted was either long gone, or spying on them right now, pretending to be a houseplant or something. Either way, Weaver wasn't available for punishment, and Cameron was the next best thing. "What about the things she said about your memory?" Sarah asked, forcing her voice to level out.

"Lies," Cameron responded. "As far as I can tell."

"As far as you can tell?" Sarah echoed. "What does that mean?"

"The files and programming on our chips are what defines us. The same way that the memories stored in the brain provide humans with their sense of identity. There's nothing in my emergency protocols that would cause the files in my memory banks to be deleted. It would be a form of self-termination and-"

"And you can't self-terminate," John finished, eyes landing on the discarded watch.

"No. I can't. If my CPU did become overloaded, there were other fail-safes that would've been activated. There are ways of decreasing the data flow without purging my memory banks.

"Like what?" Sarah questioned.

"Shutdown of non-essential background functions. And even if a purge did happen, it's the older files that would be removed first."

"And what she said about your Skynet directives?"

"My files are ranked by date, and also importance. The older files would be removed first, but so would the more non-vital ones. Future-John's programming overriding my Skynet directives is a core part of my system. Those files would be among the very last to be touched."

"Had to be good news at some point," Sarah replied. Then, out of curiosity more than anything else, "What kind of non-vital files? If this purge that apparently wouldn't happen _did _happen, what would be the first things to go?"

Again, Cameron took a moment to answer. "John doesn't like English. On our first day of school, John told me not to be a freak, and you told me not to kiss you. Or anyone else. You prefer it when I wear clothes" A pause, "Those would be the first things to go. Files that are older, or files that have no real value to my mission."

"Right," Sarah muttered. "Reorganize those files of yours; I consider the clothes thing to be pretty valuable." She really didn't need an underwear-clad Cameron hanging around Savannah. Or anyone else..

"You said that Weaver was lying about this purge and how it would work. As far as you can tell. You still haven't explained what that means." Again, John tried to control the discussion, before Cameron managed to further raise his mom's hackles.

"My chip sustained damage. If there was a purge, depending on how that damage affected my CPU, it's possible that the newer files could have been deleted first."

"_If" _Sarah repeated. "_If _there was a purge. But you don't see that as a possibility?"

"No."

"Even factoring in the damage to your chip?"

"It seems highly unlikely."

"Great. So what we keep coming back to here is that she really is just a lying terminator bitch."

"Who also really did keep me alive a few times," John pointed out, wishing he didn't have to. He also wished he didn't have to think about the fact that whatever else Weaver may have done to her, the T1001 _was _responsible for getting Cameron back. A task that should've been his. He'd ditched his post as future leader of the Resistance to do it, and had been unable to pull it off. He was able to stand here and be treated to his mom's anger and frustration only because the machine who'd just assaulted Charley had made that a possibility.

"Yeah," Sarah murmured, "She was kind enough to remind me of that." The ire was suddenly replaced with exhaustion. For once, couldn't just one thing be simple? Shaking her head, Sarah half-turned away, announcing her intention to check on Charley. John's voice called her back, and she followed green eyes that matched hers until they landed on the coffee table. On the watch.

John waited for his mother to make a move. He knew what she'd do, that wasn't in doubt. He was unsure though about what he _wanted _her to do. Then he became even more unsure when Sarah made no move to snatch up the watch she'd originally stolen, that Cameron had commandeered for her own purposes. She didn't look especially happy, as her eyes flitted between himself and Cameron, but she didn't take the watch. All she did was put her back to them and head upstairs.

Left with only Cameron for company, John picked up the watch, studied it, tested its weight in his hands. With everything else, he'd almost forgotten the chain, the feel of the watch against his chest. It'd felt cold, heavy. The power to destroy Cameron with the flick of a switch, that was a lot to carry. He hadn't wanted it. But at the same time, she'd given it to him. She'd _given him _the means to end her. And that had meant something to him, even if he hadn't had time to figure out what. It had all happened so fast after that. Riley dead. Derek. Zeira Corp. He wasn't sure what the watch meant to him, then or now. Wasn't even sure he was pleased with his mom's deciding not grab the thing away from him.

"You said I was further along than I needed to be." The words were out before John could stop them. Cameron was moving as if to wander off on patrol, but his statement halted that. Then she was facing him and he had her attention, and he couldn't decide if he wanted it or not, but it was too late now.

"No. I said you were ahead of schedule with what you needed to learn."

"Is there any real difference between those things?"

"No. I guess there isn't."

John took a breath, unconsciously tightening his grip on the watch. "I was ahead of schedule six months, a year ago, whatever the hell it is. And then…" He tried, but couldn't finish the sentence. Cameron's assessment that he couldn't be trusted anymore, it'd hurt enough being reminded of that by his mother. Saying it himself seemed almost impossible right now.

Cameron tilted her head slightly. "In some ways, you were ahead of schedule. You still are. But there are still things you need to learn."

"Are there?" John asked, more weary than angry. "Like what?"

"Like the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few."

"You been reading up on utilitarianism?" he questioned, remembering how bored he'd been as a kid during the times when lessons on engines and explosives had been replaced with ones in philosophy.

"Yes. I don't sleep. But I didn't learn that from a book."

He didn't even need to ask anymore. Future-John. It was always Future-John. "That's a good school of thought. It's also the kind that can lead to excuses about why the few can't be saved."

"Sometimes," Cameron conceded. Then, "One is never more important than billions. Than future billions. One can never be more important than that."

She didn't say one human, just one. Human, or machine. John ducked his head, ran his fingers over the watch. Like he had with her chip, in Charley's ambulance. Right before he stopped her from being burned into slag.

"Thank you."

John looked at her again, fighting the feeling that she'd somehow hacked into his thoughts. "What?"

"Thank you. For coming after me. For bringing me back."

"You're thanking me. For something you think I shouldn't have done."

"You shouldn't have. And yes, I'm thanking you."

"Why?" John questioned, working hard to minimize the strain in his voice.

"Because I didn't want to go."

John closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing the onslaught of feelings before he said something he'd regret. She'd said much the same thing once before. But this time she wasn't pinned down with John digging away at her chip. "You did though."

"Yes. I had to. I didn't want to. I didn't want to leave you."

If he wasn't looking at her already, his head would've snapped up quick enough for whiplash. She didn't want to leave him. Because of her mission? Or because of something else that John couldn't seem to wrap his mind around? Even if he'd felt like pressing her further, even if he knew at all what he wanted her answer to be, it was a moot point. She was already turning from him, starting her patrol, and he didn't call her back this time.

Time. John sighed deeply as he sank down on the couch behind him. He'd chased Cameron through time once, now he couldn't muster the energy to chase her through the house. It'd hurt, Cameron telling him how he'd screwed up. But unlike the gratitude that'd come after that, her rationale for chastising him hadn't been a surprise. It stung, but not as much as it could have. Because he'd already heard it before. Just not from Cameron.

* * *

><p><em>It'd been days now, and John still felt like he was stuck in the Twilight<em> _Zone_, _a feeling that was only exacerbated as he watched Charley Dixon shake hands with Travis Gant. It was strange enough seeing Charley in this setting, this place straight out of his mother's nightmares. Gant was military, so in a way that made more sense, but John hadn't seen the man since he was eight or nine, and hadn't expected to see him again. _

_Gant's hair was military short, as it'd been when John last saw him. It was partly gray now, and the face was more heavily lined, but other than that, Gant was very much as John remembered him. Seeing him exchange greetings with Charley, _friendly _greetings no less, was still jarring as hell. But the weirdness of that remained preferable to what followed. The hug wasn't so bad, despite how long it'd been. John would take any scrap of familiarity at that point. It was the opened-mouthed looks, the exclamations of shock. Charley had reacted in essentially the same way, but this time it wasn't just Charley._

_Ellison was there too, along with the younger Travis Gant, and Savannah. As promised, Ellison and Gant Sr. had returned from that other base, but the reunion was laced with awkwardness. Savannah barely acknowledged Charley's presence, and the looks she spared for John made him wish that he too was beneath her notice. As it was, he felt her eyes burning into his back as his mother's ex continued to study him, clutch his shoulders, talk about how he just couldn't believe it. Ellison wasn't glaring daggers like Savannah ,but John couldn't pretend to be comfortable around him. A couple of decades here was a couple days for him, and a couple days ago, he would've happily beat Ellison to a pulp as he watched his mother being ambushed._

_Gant's son apparently didn't mind that his father was lavishing attention on John, he actually smiled, seemed genuinely happy. Savannah's scowl kept deepening though, and John was pleased when Ellison crossed to her, offering an embrace. Days ago (as John thought of it), she'd called him Mr. Ellison. Mr. Ellison, teaching John Henry things in the basement of Zeira Corp. Now he was Uncle James._

_Glad as he was to see another person who actually knew who he was, John was relieved when Gant took a cue from Ellison, embracing his own son. After confirming that his daughter was busy working in the infirmary and making plans to visit her after this meaning, he moved on to greeting Savannah while Ellison spoke with Charley._

"_Hey kid," he said, affection clear in his voice. "You still keeping my boy in line?" he asked, offering a quick hug and brushing his lips over her cheek._

_Savannah shook her head as she pulled away, but the hint of a smile graced her lips. "Not my job anymore. Sorry Uncle Travis."_

_They were gathered in the room Charley used as an office, where John was taken when he first arrived. He leaned on the edge of Charley's desk with the older man beside him, curiosity piqued as he observed Savannah. This was the first time he'd seen anything but a glare on her face. The younger Gant stood a few paces to her right, and John couldn't help how his gaze traveled between them._

"_We used to date," Gant Jr. explained, apparently noting John's scrutiny._

_Savannah made a noise in the back of her throat. John got the impression that she was trying to play at annoyance, but the attempt was half-hearted at best. "Please. We used to do target practice and combat training and then make out afterward."_

"_Is that not what I just said?."_

"_We were kids. Living in the middle of nowhere. Then in a bunker. My options were limited."_

"_You still had the option to ignore me."_

"_I tried that strategy. Wasn't working. It was either kiss you or shoot you. Don't think I don't question the decision."_

"_You know you have an awful personality, right?"_

"_Go to hell, TJ," Savannah retorted, keeping her voice light._

"_Hell," Gant Sr. muttered, a smirk on his lips. "I spend two months babysitting those green little bastards over at Alpha Base, now I have to come back here and put you two in separate time-out corners again?"_

_John looked around cautiously. If Charley felt uncomfortable hearing about Savannah's love life, he wasn't showing it. His mouth was quirked at the corners, and Ellison wore a similar expression. This was the most happiness John had felt in a room since coming here. It lightened him, just a little and he wanted to ask something, but couldn't form the words. He still had trouble even thinking about her without breaking down. It was Ellison of all people who read his expression, came to his aid. _

"_Your mother wasn't thrilled when she found out."_

_TJ snorted back a laugh. "She spent an hour across from me at the kitchen table, cleaning a shotgun and subtly threatening to use it on me if I did something stupid."_

_John smiled a little. It was pained, but genuine. Eyebrows raised, he looked to his mother's ex, wondering about his opinion on the pairing._

_Travis shrugged. "I thought it was cute."_

_The son chuckled again. "You told her you wouldn't get in the way if she wanted to shoot me."_

_Gant gave another shrug. "_After _I told her it was cute."_

_That was the lightest things got. Then John was getting condolences from the new arrivals, and Savannah was favoring everyone with a stony expression. Except for Charley, who she still refused to look at. Why so much of her bitterness was directed toward Charley was a mystery to John, and he suspected it would remain a mystery, unless Savannah decided otherwise. _

_Charley talked to TJ's father about doing weapons training with John. The whole group spoke briefly about people and places John didn't know, then TJ and his father were talking about going to the infirmary before the older Gant and Ellison met up with Charley again, ostensibly to discuss field reports. John remained locked in battle with emotional shock and a major case of time-lag, but he could still read between the lines. The three men were waiting for him to be gone before they truly started talking about him._

_The current meeting was breaking up now, but Savannah wasn't moving. Instead, she made it clear that she intended to speak to John. Alone. _

"_I thought you'd gotten it out of your system already," Ellison stated. He nodded towards John, his eye still bruised from where she'd hit him. All traces of laughter were gone from his voice._

_Savannah's voice was even, almost flat. "So Charley told you. Great. Almost twenty years and you think one punch will cover it?"_

"_Savannah," Charley began, eyes narrowed._

_The redhead seemed to address everyone but_ _him. "I have something I want to say, and obviously I'm not doing it in the tunnels or the mess hall where everyone on this base is going to be staring at him wondering where the hell he came from and what he's doing here. Besides," she added, eyes landing on Gant Sr, Ellison, and a point over Charley's left shoulder, "you guys are going to talk all about him when he's not here. I can't talk _to _him while _you're_ not_ _here?"_

"_It's fine," John said_. _Part of him dreaded being alone with Savannah, but his frustration was starting to outweigh his worry. All his life people had been talking about him as though he wasn't in the room, and it never got any less irritating._

_There were murmurings and a few more seconds of arguments and then the others were dispersing. TJ offered John his gun and Savannah repeated her request for him to go to hell. Charley said he'd speak to Ellison on the way to the ex-cop's quarters. _

"_I'll be back in ten minutes," he told Savannah, an edge to his voice. John got the distinct impression that Charley was warning the redhead not to rough him up in the interim, an idea that was only reinforced by the elder Gant's next words._

"_Swear to God kid, I don't want to deal with you and that fucking time-out corner. You already repeated Thanksgiving. It's enough."_

_There was half a second to puzzle over the meaning of that, then they were leaving John in the room with her, Charley exiting last. As he left, the dim light caught the gold of the two rings, the chain around his neck. Watching the door close behind the older man, John unconsciously touched the spot on his chest where the watch used to hang. He wondered if his mom had found it, hoped she hadn't. Then he thought about the rings again. Since he got here, he must've been doing a really shitty job of blanking his expression, because everyone, including Savannah, seemed able to read him like a book._

"_Those things are going to get him killed one day. They're targets, but he ignores that because he doesn't do field work anymore. Like that makes any difference. And yes, you picked out one of them."_

_Great. Something he'd chosen was liable to get Charley killed. As if there wasn't enough blood on his hands already. "He…he kept both of them?"_

"_He did. First time I ever met him, for awhile after that, he wore his wedding ring. Then he and…your mother got back together and one day he stopped wearing it. Then awhile after that, they came back from somewhere and she was wearing the diamond. I never asked what changed, they never explained it."_

_John thought about the ring Charley gave Michelle, assumed she'd been buried with it. Then he thought about Savannah. When she'd stormed in here a few days ago, she'd referred to his mother as her own. But she'd been raging then, and she seemed to feel awkward about referring to Sarah in that way now. John couldn't pretend that he wasn't relieved. Hearing someone else call Sarah 'mom,' it bothered him in ways he couldn't explain._

"_You want to know what my problem is with you."_

_Actually, he thought he was fairly clear on that. Didn't take a nuclear scientist to figure it out. "I think I've got an idea," he said quietly._

_Savannah's voice, almost normal up to then, developed a hard edge. "You don't. You have no idea. You have no idea about any of this," she stated, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings. "You've been here a few days. You know nothing_ _about this world. But you'll figure that part out. You stay here long enough, you'll start to understand some of what the rest of us have been living for the past twenty years."_

_John said nothing, trying not to dwell on the idea of being stuck here indefinitely, of what the understanding Savannah talked about might do to him._

"_I'm here to tell you something you're not going to understand otherwise. Because Travis, Charley, James, they know, but they won't tell you. In fact, I'll get reamed out by all three of them for doing it myself. But that doesn't matter. What matters to me, what I need to give you some inkling of understanding about, is what you did to Sarah."_

_He'd known where this was going, but John still reacted as if she'd punched him again, in the gut this time. And much as some part of him knew he deserved this, the defenses still went up. "I didn't come here to abandon her. That's not-"_

_Savannah waved off his objection before he could finish voicing it. "Don't bother. Do I think you made that jump thinking you were going to run away and leave her to pick up your mess? I don't. Doesn't change the fact that that's what you did."_

"My_ mess? I never built Skynet. I didn't ask for this."_

"_Ask for this? No one _asked _for this. Bombs fell on all of us, no one wanted it. And it's not my fault that fixing things after was supposed to be your job. You weren't here, so the rest of us played the hand we were dealt. You could've done the same."_

"_I'm sure that's really easy for you to say," John replied, trying not to clench his teeth._

"_Nothing about any of this is easy, but don't act like because you're John Connor, you're the only one affected by it. You might've met them earlier, but there are a lot more machines now, and they want us all dead. _All _of us. Speaking of. Suppose you do get her back, that machine."_

"_Cameron," John said, now fighting to keep his fists from clenching as well._

"_Cameron," Savannah repeated. "The machine that my friend is going to die for."_

_Allison. He hadn't seen her since he got here. Didn't know her. Still, John sagged a little._

"_Have you thought about what's going to happen if you do find her, if you do get home? What if you manage to stop Skynet? Does she just hang around afterward?" Savannah shook her head. "I'm not…I shouldn't even be getting into this. If you have feelings for the machine, fine. I'm sure all the people the _other_ version of you, the one who actually stuck around, all those people who died on his missions, went through time on his orders, they had feelings too. People they loved. Maybe you even love the machine. Jesse Flores is still alive here, you know. Her sub's supposed to be back up in two weeks. And no matter what the woman you knew did, if your Derek was anything like the one I know, he loved her. And he still left her. On your orders. Because that was his job. He was a soldier, you were his leader, he went. I assume because you convinced him that he could do more good for Jesse and everyone else if he left them behind. We've all made sacrifices."_

_John thought about Kyle. Reese, who'd come across time for his mother. Essentially, done exactly what John himself had for Cameron. But Kyle did that for Future-John, because that had always been his role. A chance to meet the legend yes, but Reese left because he'd been willing to die for John, to save the Resistance. And that had always been his job. Protect Sarah Connor, help create John Connor, die saving them both. The man he'd died for didn't exist here. What if the Reese of this world didn't volunteer? What would happen then? _

"_Sarah almost killed herself a thousand times over keeping you alive. Every bit of hope she had, all of it was pinned on you. And I think the hope must've been what kept her going all that time, because when you left…" The anger was still there, but now it was laced with deep, pervading sadness. "She never stopped fighting. Ever. But the longer you were gone, the worse she got. There's this picture Charley has, maybe the _last _one he has."_

_Savannah described the swing-set photo, the one he'd seen on Charley's desk. The one where his mother sat smiling with Savannah and Charley, looking painfully sad as she did it. John didn't mention that he'd seen it already._

"_She always fought. But eventually she forgot to _live_, and I think that was the start of it. That thing Travis said about Thanksgiving? We'd just moved onto his ranch. J-Day wasn't far off. But TJ and I were kids, so they were still trying to make something good for us. Charley, Travis and James were trying. Your mother…she was there but she wasn't, and she'd been that way for weeks. Check in during the missions, check out afterward. And Travis, he lost it. Told her she'd have to accept the possibility that you weren't coming back, and that we'd all have to deal with that. Except he said it in Travis-speak, so Sarah punched him in the face. Right while Charley was about to serve dessert."_

_John shut his eyes, wishing he could shut his ears to Savannah's words. To his mom's words. In his head. Warning him that they were lost if they forgot about the difference between life and mission._

"_She put all her hope in you. The multiple timeline garbage, everything that might be affected by what you did, a lot of people put all their hope in you." A pause, then, "I hope you find the machine. Either way, I hope it's worth it to you, all the billions of people you put at risk by looking for her. And I hope that if you get back, the version of your mother that I knew doesn't have to exist. Because she spent her whole life keeping you alive, and then she spent the last years of hers not really living. And no one deserves that. Especially her."_

* * *

><p>There was blood on the floor when Sarah got there. Not much, but the small bits of red staining the bathroom tile still got to her, bringing images of Riley and the mess she left in her wake. Riley had cut her wrists in the old bathroom. By contrast, Charley was trying to fix himself. And doing a lousy job of it.<p>

Some of the stolen med supplies were at his feet, or next to where he sat on the rim of the tub. Sarah wasn't thrilled about breaking into the new stock so soon, but there wasn't an alternative. The wound on Charley's thigh was bleeding slowly, but steadily, and Sarah refused to let it continue.. Especially when she caught his eyes. Where the injury was, Charley couldn't get at it while retaining his modesty. There was a towel, he wasn't totally exposed, but his eyes still shot up as soon as she entered. And as soon as Sarah met his gaze, she knew it was time to intervene. He'd asked for privacy before and she hadn't argued. Now she realized that he'd sit here bleeding all night if she let him.

"Relax," she said quietly, locking the door behind her. "Nothing I haven't seen before." He was wearing a plain white t-shirt. Didn't do much appearance-wise, since his skin was a little too pale right now, highlighting the other injuries. The marks on his neck were small, but looking at them still hurt. His torso was worse. Even with the shirt, the bruises were visible, souvenirs of Weaver shoving him against the shelf, keeping him there none too gently. A canvass of black and blue, thinly covered in white. She wouldn't ask him to lift the shirt, despite a morbid need to see. There would be plenty of opportunity for that later.

"Sarah," he began.

Shaking her head, Sarah crossed to him and attempted to tamp down the emotions. He was trying, but his voice wasn't normal, and it had nothing to do with Weaver's hand on his neck. Nothing, and everything. "Get this out of the way, she ordered, already moving the towel. "Move," she told him with quiet authority, shifting the medical supplies so she could sit next to him on the tub.

"You don't need to do this," he protested, even as he followed her commands.

"Apparently I do. You aren't." Worry made her voice rough, hard, and Sarah had to take a breath and give herself a few seconds before speaking again. "Me, Cameron or James. Take your pick."

Charley didn't bother responding to that one. "We should work on your bedside manner."

If he was joking, if he cared enough to try and preserve appearances, she guessed that was a good sign. He'd barely spoken to her since the hospital, relating the Weaver details only to get her to stop badgering him, staring at him. But the look he'd had in the truck, the one he'd had when he retreated from her after they came home, that was still there. He tried to hide it, tried making light of it, but it remained firmly in place. He looked haunted and shell-shocked and a million other things, and Sarah was powerless to rid him of that expression. "There's a reason this is your job and not mine," she said forcing a bit of lightness into her tone and hoping it would be enough to cover the feelings of inadequacy.

As she went about stitching up the leg wound, Sarah wondered if she should even be here, wished she could sink into the floor like the metal bitch. It wasn't bad enough that the terminator had apparently been watching them more closely than even Sarah had feared, that she could be masquerading as a shampoo bottle, observing them right now. Nor was it enough that John Henry had been sharing headspace with Cameron, potentially giving him access to all the knowledge the Tin Miss had on them. As if Weaver didn't know too much already. Those things weren't enough. The metal had to summon Michelle's ghost as well.

Weaver's reasons for doing so, her message to Charley, they were predictably cryptic. Charley had repeated Weaver's warning to her, just as the machine had predicted. Sarah hadn't repeated the exact words to John and Cameron, at least not yet. John in particular might be able to provide some context, but Sarah was uneasy about giving him the message without Charley's consent. There was that, and there was also the mixture of horror and anger that came when she realized what the watch had been used for. Regardless, Sarah didn't know why the machine had taken Michelle's form, why she felt the need to screw with Charley's head. Nor did she especially care just now. She simply despised Weaver for tearing open old wounds.

Sarah focused on the practical, because she could do nothing about the other things. She got the leg taken care of, doing a good job of it, even if Charley would've been better. She'd improved ten-fold over the girl who'd nearly puked all over Kyle while she wrapped his injured arm. Still, she apologized whenever Charley winced, and he said it was okay and tried to smile, but the smile never got anywhere close to his eyes. Sarah picked up a pair of shorts that he'd brought in and discarded on the floor. "You need help?" she asked quietly.

The softness of her tone was met with a stiff shake of the head, and Sarah cursed silently. When she passed him the garment, their hands touched and he flinched as if she'd burned him. Stifling a grimace, Sarah stood up quickly, stepping over to the sink. The water she used to clean her hands was too hot. She didn't care. Closing her eyes to the reflections in the bathroom mirror, Sarah listened to Charley's movements, waiting for them to cease before reopening her eyes to find him in the glass. He was back on the edge of the tub, examining the tile. His fingers were laced so tightly that Sarah might've thought he was intentionally tying them in knots. "What are you thinking?" she asked. There were several possibilities, none of them good, but Sarah needed to hear.

"I should've known," he said after a long beat of silence.

Reflexively, Sarah gripped the edge of the sink with both hands. She couldn't tell him it was okay, it wasn't. Methods and reasons aside, Weaver's warning wasn't unfounded. Confusing a machine for one of their own, it wasn't something that could be fixed with a simple 'You'll do better next time.' A mistake with a terminator made the possibility of 'next time' very, very slim. So she couldn't say it was all right, the words would've rung false to both of them.

Crossing back to the tub, she reclaimed her place at Charley's side, doing her best to ignore the tension rolling off him. His gaze stayed down, but at this moment Sarah was grateful for that. She kept her own eyes straight ahead, unable to even get close to looking at him while she said this next part. "In '84, after Reese and I escaped the police station, we holed up at this motel and he went out for supplies." Sarah could feel Charley's gaze on her now, knew she had his attention. She wasn't telling him anything new though. Not yet. "Before he left, he told me not to use the phone. And then he was gone and I was still scared out of my mind, knew she would be too, so I called my mother. I told her to stay away and she said she would, but she wanted a way to reach me. So I gave her a phone number. And then the machine found us, and after the factory, after the adrenaline and the morphine wore off, I figured out why."

"God. Sarah…"

Sarah shook her head. She wasn't going to get into it. He understood, that was the important thing. Without wanting to, she heard Derek in her head, asking if she thought she'd be able to tell if she was living with a machine. Her answer had been quick and assured, and also a lie. "You don't always know," she told Charley, still avoiding his eyes. "If you're lucky, you live through it and you learn from it. That's all you can hope for."

The machine would've found them eventually, Sarah had enough experience now to be certain of that. Relatively certain. While she was trying not to dwell on her role in Reese's death, Charley touched the side of her cheek, gently turned it until she was looking at him. The compassion in his eyes killed her, but it was good too. If he had the presence of mind to be worried about her, then he wasn't completely out of her reach. Cautiously, Sarah cupped the back of his neck, gently pulling his head down until her lips found a spot above his right eyebrow. Sarah heard his breath catch, simply resting her lips against his skin. And waiting. His hand was still on her face, they were practically sharing the same air. And because of that, Sarah knew when the tension returned, even before the warmth of his hand went away and he was pulling back.

"Sorry," he said in a voice that barely passed for his. "I don't-"

"Shhh." For half a second, Sarah's finger went to his lips, curtailing the apology, then she let her hand drop. He'd been edgy after Kaliba found the lighthouse, they both had. But he'd never been so keyed up that she couldn't even touch him without making him flinch. Much as it stung though, Sarah understood. Trauma wasn't new for Charley, but what happened today was different. Kaliba invaded his home, shot at him, but at least he'd been able to run, return fire. Michelle was gone because of Cromartie, but the machine hadn't been there when she died, had never come into close contact with Charley. What happened to him previously, none of that would've prepared him for today. There was a special kind of fear that came when running and fighting and shooting stopped being options. Unwillingly, Sarah recalled all the times she'd been in Charley's position. Pinned down, no way of fighting, her life in the hands of a machine whose sole purpose was to end it.

The terror of that never eased, no matter how many times you had to face it. Sarah wanted nothing more than to get those feelings out of Charley's head, but words were hollow in this situation, and she'd never been good with reassurances anyway. And physically…physical comfort wouldn't work. She wouldn't even risk another touch of the hand unless he initiated. She knew Weaver had kissed him. The thought of it made her ill. He'd told her about being unable to move. Unable to breathe. And that triggered more memories for her. Pescadero. The three orderlies that'd come late at night while she was too drugged to fight. She'd bitten one of them and tasted blood, but it did no good. The others still held her down, took turns covering her mouth. The taste of that first man's blood had remained on her lips, bitter and disgusting. That was nothing compared to the bitterness in her soul as they made her clean up afterward, made her get rid of the blood on her thighs.

"Sarah?"

Fuck. She'd shuddered and he'd noticed, and his hand was on her back. He wouldn't get an answer on what caused her reaction. Just wouldn't. She'd told him a lot of things, more than she'd ever meant to, but the secret of that night wouldn't make the list. Ever. It would be too much. For both of them, probably.

Sarah thought of Weaver kissing Charley, holding him in place. She thought of rough, unrelenting hands in Pescadero. Then she thought about what it would be like to look up at her attackers and see Reese's face. Have it be Reese's voice telling her to relax and shut up. To have Reese as her tormentor. Or Charley, if she'd known him back then.

No wonder Charley was such a wreck.

Apparently realizing the touch wouldn't help, Charley took his hand away. Sarah was relieved and saddened at the same time. Needing to look at anything except Charley's face, Sarah unintentionally found his left hand. It was on his knee now, clenching tightly, and it reminded her of the other thing hanging between them. The timing wasn't good, but she didn't know that it ever _would _be for this conversation. Reaching into her pocket, Sarah took hold of the ring that Charley had carried in his, the thing that hit the floor when Weaver cut into his thigh.

"Why do you still have this?" she asked, barely able to believe what she was looking at.

Charley almost stared at the tile again, at one of the bloodspots there. Instead he kept his gaze locked on Sarah, voice as steady as he could make it. "Because I couldn't believe what James said at first, that it was all a lie."

"It wasn't."

"I know that," he assured her. "I…it was all I had left. Of you."

"I don't know why you'd want it. I left. I lied."

He'd actually tried getting rid of it more than once. Had come quite close to chucking it into the crater where the bank had been, when he first came to L.A. After he asked Michelle to marry him, he'd pawned Sarah's ring. Then paid to get it back twelve hours later. "You did," he acknowledged. "You didn't lie about everything, and I loved you. I couldn't just…turn it off, Sarah."

"And after Michelle? Cromartie?"

That was harder. Couldn't say much for him as a husband, that he'd secretly kept the engagement ring of his fiancé the terrorist. But after Michelle's death…that was almost impossible to explain, even to himself. "I couldn't just turn it off," he repeated softly.

Nodding more to herself than him, Sarah ran her fingers over the small band of gold. There were scratches, imperfections she'd never seen. She couldn't help pointing these out to him.

Charley shrugged, smiled through the pain that move brought to his shoulders and back. "I said I _couldn't _turn it off. Doesn't mean I didn't try." She seemed to get that answer without needing elaboration. Charley was glad. He didn't feel like telling her that he'd almost thrown the ring in the thermite pit she'd set up in his old garage. Or that he'd almost tossed it in the ocean a time or three..

"You know we can't get married."

"I know." He assumed this was her way of asking why he'd been carrying the thing, not that he had an answer for that either. He'd found it in one of his bags when they moved and just…hadn't put it back. He wasn't sure why, except that things had been going well between them for a long time now. Despite what was happening with John and everything else, between _them_, things had been good. There'd be no marriage, he hadn't planned on asking. All the names they went through, what would be the point? Still, he'd kept the ring with him since they moved in here.

Sarah nodded again, studied the ring further. She'd taken it from him because he'd been a statue at the hospital, wouldn't even close his fingers around the band. It'd been easier to grab it herself, say a few quick commands and get them both out of there. Now, with more reluctance than she would've expected, she held the ring out to him.

"No," he said, closing her fingers around the ring. "It's yours."

"I gave it back."

"Because you wanted to?"

Sarah had no response for that one.

"I gave it to you. You do what you want with it."

A moment's pause. Then, "I really did want to marry you."

"I'd hope so," he said, bringing her knuckles to his lips.

A few more beats of indecision, then Sarah extricated her fingers from his, giving the ring one last look before pocketing it again, resolving to stash it somewhere safe. It was the symbol of everything that'd been good about her relationship with Charley and until now, Sarah hadn't realized just how much she'd missed it.

* * *

><p>"You missed dinner," John observed. Charley had just entered the kitchen, and John watched the older man carefully from his place at the counter.<p>

"I'll grab some leftovers later," Charley replied, very aware of the scrutiny he was under. He'd changed into warmer clothes that hid the bruises Sarah insisted needed ice packs "I'm fine, John," he said, hoping to sound reassuring.

"Are you?" John asked. He hadn't seen the man in hours, and used thirst as an excuse to get up and examine him more closely.

Charley's smile was wry but real as he moved aside so John could access the cabinets. "Getting there," he amended.

Nodding, John grabbed a glass and went to the fridge, emerging with a carton of juice. Setting both on the counter, he turned to face Charley, unable to wait any longer. "What did she say to you?" he asked. "What _exactly _did she say to you that was worth cornering you like that?"

Charley closed his eyes, hating the necessity of this. Reciting the message wasn't hard though. It would be etched in his brain for a long, long time. So he told John what Weaver said about Cromartie, about being deceived. About how someone else would die if he let himself be deceived again. He didn't know how much the message was eating at him until he had time to calm down and take it in, until he was saying it aloud. "You were with her in the future."

"Sometimes," John hedged, "Briefly." He shouldn't have asked. There'd been no choice, but he shouldn't have asked.

"Yeah. But you saw things, I mean…you have any idea what that's about? Why she directed it at me?"

John poured from the carton, putting his back to Charley. He gripped the glass tightly, but his hands still shook a little. "No," he lied, keeping his voice perfectly level. "Not a clue."


End file.
